


Machines and Marvels

by rainbowninja167



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Enemies to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Forced Proximity, Happy Ending, M/M, PTSD, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 16:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18876787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowninja167/pseuds/rainbowninja167
Summary: "The only future in which you have a hope of defeating Thanos is one where the Avengers remain whole and undivided. Do you understand? No matter what else happens, it’s imperative that the Avengers stay together."“Wait. What the fuck are the Avengers?”Or: In an alternate timeline where the Avengers never formed, Steve and Tony need a crash course in team bonding. Stephen Strange justhadto take that literally.





	Machines and Marvels

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cap - IM RBB 2019 Team EXTREMIS Artwork](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18871210) by [ssyn3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssyn3/pseuds/ssyn3). 



> Thank you so much to [ssyn3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssyn3/pseuds/ssyn3) for creating the amazing art that inspired this fic! Thank you also for being such a wonderful and generous collaborator. I've loved having the chance to work with you!
> 
> I also want to follow-up real quickly on the tags: this whole fic takes place pre-Thanos and pre-Endgame, but in a random alternate timeline where the Avengers never coalesced as a team after New York. So the _strong_ implication is that the events of Endgame will not happen the same way (aka everyone lives happily ever after, The End).
> 
> Basically, the only thing my brain wanted after seeing Endgame was to write, like, the tropiest fic to ever trope. This is the result.

Tony spins himself once around on his lab’s rolling stool, and then – because it’s not like there’s anybody around to see him – he spins around again.

“Stark! Are you even listening to me?” a sharp voice sounds through his lab speakers.

“I _am_ trying, Rogers, but you keep getting drowned out by this loud whining noise. You might wanna upgrade your comms,” Tony retorts mildly, and is gratified to hear a growl of irritation in response.

“I’m standing in a HYDRA base that’s set to blow in thirty seconds. I didn’t call you for your _jokes_.”

“No, you called me because I can do this—" Tony taps a few computer keys, and the faint blaring of an alarm from Rogers’ side of the call goes abruptly silent. “And this—" he taps a few more with a flourish, and he doesn’t have to _hear_ HYDRA’s security protocols resetting to know that they are. “And also this—" a last flourish with the keyboard, and Tony would give almost anything to see Rogers’ face right now, as a hidden door swings open right beside him. Not hidden enough from Tony, once he started poking around in the guts of HYDRA’s system “But you gotta admit, the jokes did keep you busy long enough for me to get some actual work done.”

_“’Actual work_?’” Rogers repeats incredulously.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you _want_ me to leave you in the evil science basement to die?”

“Let’s just say, I can suddenly see the advantages,” Rogers retorts, and Tony throws his arms in the air.

_Unbelievable,_ he mouths silently to himself. His chair swivels again, this time powered purely by the force of his irritation with Steve Rogers. Tony has just _saved_ his _life_ – that is a true and unbiased account of what Tony has done – and Rogers is still treating him like he’s the Comcast help line.

Tony is opening his mouth to tell Rogers just that – but probably with a lot more obscure cultural references, just to _really_ piss him off – when there’s a crackle of electricity, and suddenly a man in a voluminous cape is standing in the center of Tony’s workshop. The man glances around at his surroundings.

“Gotta call you back, Cap. I’ve been invaded,” Tony announces, and lets his chair drift around to face the stranger, slow and easy to distract from the sharp flicks of his wrist that will call up his Iron Man suit.

“It’s not polite to teleport into someone’s house unannounced, you know,” Tony begins conversationally. “JARVIS?”

“I’m afraid my scans are inconclusive, Sir.”

Tony squints and tilts his head. The man actually looks vaguely familiar. Hm. Tony doesn’t think he’s a former SHIELD agent, and the man doesn’t _look_ like a villain Tony’s fought…did they _sleep_ together? Wait, no! It’s that hipster wizard from the last time Doombots attacked New York.

“Doctor Strange,” Tony concludes triumphantly. “Nice of you to Apparate in.”

“Tony! What the _hell_ happened here?” Doctor Strange says, and it occurs to Tony that what he’d thought was a menacing silence had actually been what Doctor Strange looks like when he’s at a total loss for words.

“What?”

Had Tony and Doctor Strange even been on a first name basis the last time they’d met? He’s not sure _he_ knows Strange’s first name, unless it’s “Doctor,” which does seem like the kind of pretentious bullshit he’d pull.

“Your lab!” Strange stares at Tony like he’s been body-snatched. “Has there been an attack? Is everyone alright?”

“Um, _yeah_ there was an attack. Aliens invaded, blew up my building, it was a whole thing. Maybe you saw it on the news. ‘Battle of New York’ ring any bells?”

“But that was in 2012.”

“Sure was.”

“And you haven’t rebuilt the Tower yet?”

“Nope,” Tony says shortly.

And like, _okay_ , maybe there _is_ still a hole or two blasted through the walls, but it’s just some _light_ rubble. It’s not like Tony’s had a lot of time to devote to interior decorating since aliens literally _invaded the Earth_. And it’s _definitely_ unfair that Tony is getting sassed about it by Stranger Danger over here.

“It wasn’t a priority, okay? I’d lived in Malibu for years. The New York headquarters of Stark Industries was a fun dream that literally _fell apart around me_ , and suddenly staying in Malibu was looking better and better. I’m only here this weekend because the UN wouldn’t let me Skype in.”

Strange blinks at him like Tony had started speaking a different language.

“Why I am I even explaining this to you? This is still _my_ building. I can fill it with as much rubble as I want. _You_ were the one who broke in!”

“Fine, whatever! Ugh, I’m already totally off-script…” Strange mutters to himself, before taking a deep breath and fixing Tony with a piercing stare. “Tony Stark,” he intones, “the universe is in danger from a powerful Titan named Thanos. I have taken a great risk by traveling back in time to warn you, but you need to know – the only future in which you have a _hope_ of defeating Thanos is one where the Avengers remain whole and undivided. Do you understand? No matter what else happens, it’s _imperative_ that the Avengers stay together.”

Strange finishes his prepared message with a dramatic little flourish of his cape, and watches Tony expectantly. Tony stares back.

“Wait. What the fuck are the Avengers?”

***

Twenty minutes later, Steve Rogers bursts into Tony’s workshop in all his shield-wielding glory to find Tony gazing at the empty space where a wizard from another universe – apparently – had just disappeared in a gratifyingly cinematic puff of smoke.

Before that, Strange had subjected Tony to an increasingly frantic interrogation, starting with “ _What_?” and ending somewhere around “…and you’re _sure_ the World Security Council never sent a nuclear bomb to New York during the Chitauri Invasion?”

“Um, no?” Tony had replied. “I know I was a little distracted at the time, but I do think if the WSC had literally _blown up_ New York, I would’ve noticed.”

Strange had laughed a little hysterically, and Tony had found himself growing concerned about the man despite himself.

“Hey, do you wanna maybe sit down? Also, is something wrong with your cape?”

“It’s a cloak, actually.”

“Whatever it is, I think it might be having a panic attack.”

Strange had waved off his concern, and continued desperately: “So then, what happened after the Chitauri were defeated?”

“I dunno. What usually happens after an alien invasion? Life went on.”

“—With the _Avengers_ …”

“Oh!” Tony snapped his fingers. “I remember now. ‘The Avengers Initiative’ – that’s the name Fury gave his weird little side-project, right? Yeah, that got scrapped right away.”

“I’m sorry, it _what._ ” Lightning had crackled dangerously over Strange’s skin, and Tony had hurried to explain.

“Well, the minute we closed the portal against the Chitauri, everyone just started squabbling again. So we decided it would be best for the continued safety of the planet if we all just…went our separate ways. And honestly? I think it’s kinda cute that Fury thought something like the Avengers Initiative ever stood a chance in hell of succeeding in the first place. I mean, put a bunch of superheroes, spies, and demigods together, and suddenly it’s like every one of us is named Yoko Ono, you know what I mean?”

“Believe me, Stark, I never have any idea what you mean,” Strange had said dryly. “But this is uniquely bad, even for you.”

“Hey!”

But Strange was too busy muttering frantically to himself to care about Tony’s wounded feelings.

“None of this is right. Unless I jumped _universes_ – but that would mean the original spell was completely wrong…”

The cape (or the cloak, whatever) interjected with little rustlings and nudges, all of which Strange seemed to find totally comprehensible.

“So do you still need me for this conversation, or…“ Tony had finally said loudly. “I _do_ have a company to run, plus a whole superhero side-gig, and as much fun as it’s been to sit here and watch you talk to your outerwear…”

“No, you don’t understand. I must not have travelled back in time like I thought. I must have travelled to a completely different universe.”

“Well that’s good, right?” Tony said brightly, never one to look a gift wizard in the mouth. “Means all your dire predictions of world-ending doom and gloom no longer apply. Maybe Thanos or whoever isn’t coming.”

“Thanos always comes. He’s inevitable,” Strange had retorted, in such a flat voice that Tony’d had to suppress an involuntary shiver. “No, this is bad. This is very bad. You’re really saying you and Steve don’t work together _at all_ in this universe?”

“Steve _Rogers_?” Tony had laughed. “I mean, sure, sometimes, when he _literally_ has no other options.”

Strange had suddenly looked very grave. Even his stupid cloak had made this oddly gentle gesture, like it thought Tony was on his deathbed.

“Stark, listen, you need to – oh _shit_.”

“Are you…supposed to be going all sparkly and transparent?”

“That’s the spell calling me back. My time in this universe must be running out. God, I didn’t think I’d have to _explain_ so much to you, I didn’t _plan_ for this—“

“Well sorry for having such a crap universe, I guess…”

“What am I supposed to—” Strange turned frantically to ask his cloak. “I don’t have the time to—oh! Yes, that might actually work!”

And then he’d whirled on Tony and done something complicated with his hands, and the next thing Tony knows, Strange is gone and Steve _Fucking_ Rogers is flinging himself through Tony’s doorway like a silent film star gearing up to untie his sweetheart from the train tracks.

“Stark!” Rogers barks, scanning the workshop for threats. “What’s going on?”

“Seriously, does _nobody_ ring the doorbell anymore?”

Although this seems like a perfectly reasonable question to _Tony_ , it only serves to worry Rogers, who crosses the room in a few quick strides to reach for Tony’s hand.

“Are you concussed—"

The moment their hands touch, there’s a loud bang, and a crackle of now all-too-familiar electricity, and both Tony and Rogers are thrown to the floor.

“Ow, _what_ —” Tony groans. He thinks he knocked his head against his desk because it’s suddenly killing him, and he can feel several scrapes and bruises forming from where he hit the floor, and if _one more asshole_ comes into his workshop without permission, he’s going to order JARVIS to lay waste to the whole miserable building.

But when Tony blinks the sparks out of his eyes enough to check around, it doesn’t seem like there’s anybody else in the workshop besides him and Rogers, who is…still holding his hand.

“Um, Cap? You’re very sweet, but I’m not actually a Victorian maiden succumbing to consumption.”

“What?” Rogers asks distantly as his eyes dart around the workshop, scanning for threats. Tony tugs at his hand meaningfully.

“This doesn’t seem like a _Titanic_ situation – you _can_ let go. Plus, you’d probably do okay in the Atlantic, so…”

“Oh!” Rogers glances down at their joined hands, his face going a bit pink. Tony might even find it cute, if he didn’t think Captain America would punch him for even thinking about it. “Sorry!”

Rogers pulls on Tony’s hand once, falters, and then stares down at their still-clasped hands.

“Rogers? Are you glitching? Does your brain need a force-reboot? What’s going on?”

“Um…” Rogers says, still looking at their hands with wide eyes.

“Seriously, Cap, let go! It’s not funny—”

It’s not that Tony _can’t_ be touched by strangers, it’s just that he has a _very healthy suspicion_ of super-strong _dickheads_ getting all up in his space. It’s completely normal to dislike people grabbing onto his hands, and not at all a cause for concern, and if Rogers is pulling a prank based on some _very rude footnotes_ in Tony’s old SHIELD files, well…you’d think Rogers would know better than to trust the conclusions of people who turned out to be literal Nazis, but what does Tony know.

“Uh, Stark?”

“Let _go_ ,” Tony – who is absolutely, in no way, panicking about this – repeats. He yanks at his hand, but Rogers still has a tight hold on it.

“ _I can’t_ —"

Nothing about this is remotely the same as being tied down in a cave, or being trapped inside your own body as it falls apart, but even so, Tony can’t get free, he’s –

“Ow!”

Punching Rogers in the face.

It’s not a hard punch, but Rogers clearly wasn’t expecting it; clearly Rogers doesn’t understand how utterly serious Tony feels about Rogers dropping his hand. Right. Now.

…It’s possible that Tony is panicking about this.

But Tony’s own regular-human strength doesn’t seem to be enough to dislodge Rogers or shake his own hand loose. What if he can’t get free? His breath starts to catch.

“ _Iron Man!_ ” Rogers shouts, which startles Tony into taking a full breath.

“Like I said, I can’t actually let go. I think our hands might be…um…magically stuck together,” Rogers mumbles, and really, there’s nothing for Tony to do in response to a statement like that, except to topple over onto the floor and wait for death to take him.

“Fucking _wizards_!”

***

Some time later, Tony is still lying sullenly on the ground, holding Steve Rogers’ hand. After filling Rogers in on the details of Strange’s universe-hopping visit, Tony had tried to come up with a technological solution for separating them. But if Rogers was going to veto all of his most promising ideas for being “dangerous,” then they were never gonna get anywhere at all.

“Why are you even _here_?” Tony finally asks sourly, tugging at Rogers’ hand just to see him wobble slightly before managing to stabilize himself against Tony’s desk. Rogers shoots him a dirty look, to which Tony just smiles blandly.

“You said you were being invaded, and then your comms cut out. Why do you think I’m here? I rushed back to New York to make sure you weren’t dead,” Rogers says, his tone implying heavily that he wishes Tony were.

“I always knew your hero complex would be our downfall.”

“Maybe if _you_ were more careful about striking up conversations with strangers…”

“He wasn’t a stranger, he was – oh!” Tony makes to sit up, forgets he’s still attached to Rogers, and goes down again hard, but he barely even registers the pain because he’s finally realized what they can try next. “Stephen Strange!”

Rogers gives him a funny look. “Ye-es, that _is_ who we’re talking about. Are you sure you didn’t knock your head too hard when we fell?”

“Y’know, our little chats would go a lot smoother if you’d stop attributing all my best ideas to brain injuries. I’m not talking about the Stephen Strange who gate-crashed our universe, I’m talking about the one who lives _here_.”

“That’s actually…a good idea,” Rogers says, and Tony rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, try to contain your shock and awe. Do you know where he usually hangs out? I’ve only ever run into him mid-battle. Is there like a New York version of Hogwarts?”

“Well, Ilvermorny’s in Massachusetts,” Rogers says. There's a beat, and then his eyes widen hilariously. “I mean—"

“Nope!” Tony gives him a wide grin. “Too late; I know your secret now. Your first act after being introduced to the wonders of 21st century technology was to take a Buzzfeed Sorting Hat Quiz. Classic Gryffindor.”

“Classic Hufflepuff, actually,” Rogers grumbles, clearly giving up on all pretenses. “And you can’t find Strange yourself? You can’t do your…“ Rogers makes a hand gesture that could mean anything from “impressively complex feat of programming” to “inappropriate violation of civil liberties,” although Tony assumes that with Rogers, it’s more likely to be the latter.

“JARVIS?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but it seems as though something has magically interfered with Doctor Strange’s digital footprint. I have not been successful at tracking him.”

“Fucking wizards,” Tony repeats. It’s what he’d assumed would happen, but it’s still annoying as hell that anyone’s able to thwart JARVIS.

“Wait,” Rogers says. “I think I might have another idea we can try. I have a contact in SHIELD—”

“You _do_?” Tony can’t help but blurt out. Rogers’ break-up with SHIELD several years ago – like so many of Tony’s own break-ups – had been both very messy and very public. Concrete details had been thin on the ground. Really, the only thing the press had been able to get their hands on, before SHIELD shut everything down again, was footage of several Helicarriers crashing into the Potomac. And that was mostly because there’s only so much even a shadowy quasi-government organization could do to suppress an entire city’s worth of cell phone footage.

But whatever had happened in DC that day, it had been bad enough for Steve Rogers to cut ties with SHIELD almost immediately afterwards. And ever since then, journalists and bloggers alike have been desperate to know why.

Tony, however, hadn’t been constrained by tiny details like classified documents. Plus, he figured it was an issue that directly concerned him. It was around this time that Rogers had started calling him, with visible reluctance, for tech support as he pursued his own solitary vendetta against HYDRA. So Tony had managed to drag the whole story out of SHIELD’s servers: how SHIELD had been infiltrated by HYDRA; how Fury had faked his own death and tasked Rogers with uncovering the conspiracy; how Rogers and some guy named Sam Wilson had briefly tangled with a HYDRA assassin called the Winter Soldier, but they’d both been captured almost immediately; how they’d gotten free and taken down the Helicarriers threatening to _Minority Report_ the whole planet (luckily, they hadn’t been too hard to destroy. Tony could’ve told Fury about the serious design flaws in those engine turbines, but thankfully for humanity, nobody had ever bothered to ask). Afterwards, SHIELD had battened down the hatches and tried to rebuild its tattered organization – _sans_ one super-soldier, of course.

“You know, I’ve always wondered: there must’ve been a moment when you were holding all of SHIELD’s secrets in your hands, right? Everything HYDRA had done in their name. Weren’t you tempted to expose them completely? I mean, if a design’s not coming together, sometimes the only option is to tear it apart and start all over again. Like SHIELD Mark 2. But you didn’t do that.”

Rogers doesn’t bother to ask how Tony knows so many SHIELD secrets. He shoots Tony a sidelong, considering look before he sighs and shakes his head. The grip of his hand – which Tony has almost managed to forget – lightens up, even if he still can’t let go entirely. And while Tony usually considers Rogers’ impeccable posture to be one of his more annoying qualities, there’s a slump to his body now that Tony has never seen before, but nevertheless looks habitual. Like Rogers’ squared shoulders are a coat he’s just taken off.

“The Avengers Initiative had failed,” Rogers finally reminds Tony. “Even as broken as it is, SHIELD feels like the only viable option for protecting Earth. Just because _I_ couldn’t stay—well. Fury knew I’d been planning to leave SHIELD for a while. All HYDRA really did was speed up my timeline.”

Huh. _That_ information had _not_ been in SHIELD’s files. It also makes absolutely no sense. Everything Tony’s father had _ever_ said about Rogers implied that he’d be a perfect fit for SHIELD. A superhuman company man.

“Why?” Some of his bafflement makes its way into his tone, and Rogers tenses, like maybe he’s realized he revealed more than he meant to.

“…Anyway, like I said, I’ve still got a friend on the inside,” Rogers says, ignoring Tony’s question with a brittle smile.

He immediately busies himself with his phone so that Tony doesn’t have the opportunity to push it. Although Tony isn’t actually sure whether he would have pushed on this or not. Granted, attacking a problem until it’s solved _is_ kind of his MO. On the other hand, Rogers has shown himself to be – at least in this specific instance – more complicated than Tony gave him credit for, and he’s also shown himself able to hide that complexity when he wants to.

You don’t become an engineer as skilled as Tony without learning how to tread lightly in the face of complex systems.

Rogers fiddles one-handed with his phone for a few more seconds, and then finally manages to reach his super-secret SHIELD contact.

“Sam?”

Right. Tony had never totally figured out how Sam Wilson had gotten tangled up with Rogers during the whole HYDRA debacle, but he’s kept enough of an eye on SHIELD over the years to know that Wilson had been aggressively recruited by SHIELD soon after. As far as Tony can tell, Fury trusts him now almost as much as he does Maria Hill.

Rogers continues: “Does SHIELD have any records on the whereabouts of a Doctor Stephen Strange? Possibly located in or around New York?”

And then Rogers heaves the kind of long-suffering sigh that would be more appropriate coming from a teenager. Tony stares at him in shock. He can barely believe Rogers had acted like a teenager when he _was_ one. It seems far more likely that Rogers had just sprung fully-formed onto this Earth as a paragon of morality.

“Fine,” Rogers is grumbling. “ _Hi, Sam_. How are you?” There’s a pause, where Rogers doesn’t exactly roll his eyes. But he looks like he _would’ve_ , if Tony hadn’t been there to catch him at it.

“It’s not dangerous.” Another pause. “No, really, I _know_ what I promised, but there aren’t going to _be_ any explosions. This one’s…“ Rogers shoots Tony an unreadable glance. “…personal.”

So Wilson has been trying to limit Rogers’ propensity to dive into danger. _Interesting._

And _maybe_ , if Tony hadn’t been a genius, his next thought might not have been to recall all the times that Rogers had called _him_ for help over the last several years. And maybe he wouldn’t have noticed a pattern: each one of them had involved some sort of threat of explosion or serious bodily harm.

But, unfortunately for Rogers, Tony _is_ a genius. So it only takes him a few seconds to infer that Rogers has made some sort of promise to check in with Wilson if he’s likely to be hurt on a solo mission. Furthermore, Rogers has broken that promise with impunity. And in conclusion, he asks for Tony’s help rather than SHIELD’s whenever he doesn’t want Wilson to catch him doing it. QED.

And Tony thought Rogers loved him for his mind.

“Uh, I don’t really want get into it now,” Rogers is saying into the phone. He shoots Tony another sidelong look, like it’s _Tony’s_ fault that neither of them can get any privacy from the other.

“Like I said, it’s perso– not _that_ kind of personal!” And to Tony’s endless delight, Rogers goes bright red and stares intently at something on the ceiling. “Does SHIELD know Strange’s address, or not?”

Rogers listens for a moment longer, and then says “thanks, Sam _”_ like the words have to be physically dragged out of him.

“So,” Tony says brightly, the instant Rogers hangs up his phone. “Do you call me in for the dangerous missions rather than Wilson because you think I’ll care less if you die, or…“

Rogers’ expression barely changes – except perhaps for a slight clenching of his jaw –but he practically crushes Tony’s hand in his, like he’d tried to ball his fists but had forgotten that Tony is still attached.

“I never forced you to help me,” Rogers says evenly, but Tony can still feel his fingers twitching.

“Right,” Tony scoffs. “Because when a national icon calls me up all ‘hey, Stark, I’m rescuing a prisoner and HYDRA upgraded their cell locks, any thoughts? And oh, by the way, the guards already know I’m here, so talk fast,’ I regularly just hang up on them. Seriously? I’ve been pulling your ass out of danger for years and you still believe everything you see about me on TMZ?”

God, Tony can’t believe that earlier he was almost feeling _empathy_ for the guy. ‘Complex system,’ his ass. If only Rogers was ever willing to think the same about him.

And it’s not like Tony didn’t know that Rogers was using him. They were never _friends._ Maybe there’s not exactly a word for it, when you’re mutually using each other, long-term. Heroing-with-benefits? In any case, it’s one thing to know that, and quite another thing to learn that Rogers only calls him when he feels he has _absolutely_ no other choice. Somehow, being _underused_ feels worse than being used.

Rogers shifts uncomfortably in response to Tony’s question, and then, true to form, changes the subject.

“Sam gave me an address for Strange. He lives in the Village.”

“He _would_ ,” Tony grumbles, but he allows himself to be pulled to his feet.

Naturally, they argue several more times on the way to Strange’s place, starting with whether they should allow Happy to drive them. Tony wins that one, after he makes the point that it’s not safe to drive with only one hand, but Rogers is annoyed enough about it to start a side-argument about the fastest way from Stark Tower to the Village, which nearly incites Happy to commit homicide.

Eventually, Happy drops them off in front of a large Victorian brownstone, and they manage to clamber out of the car. There is one alarming moment when Rogers pulls and Tony pushes, and the two of them nearly tumble out into the street. But Rogers manages to right them both before they end up sprawled on the sidewalk.

And so now they stand in front of the brownstone, still holding hands, and squabbling over whether Strange’s wards might be set to incinerate anyone who tries to ring the doorbell.

“A _Home Alone_ -style Rube Goldberg murder device just _seems_ like the kind of thing a house with an address like ‘177A Bleecker Street’ would have,” Tony argues. “It’s like the world’s most annoying Sherlock Holmes cosplay.”

“That’s actually a common misconception,” notes a voice from behind them. They both try to whirl around to face the newcomer, and then have to spend the next several moments untangling themselves from their own arms, all under the amused gaze of Stephen Strange.

“In truth, the house was chosen for its connection to mystical energies, which are not beholden to human concepts like street names and numbers,” Strange continues. “Mr. Stark. Captain Rogers.” He nods at them both. “How can I help you?”

His eyes dart down to their clasped hands, and then back up again. He raises one amused eyebrow. Trust this guy to be a dick in any universe.

“This might sound a little strange…” Rogers begins, and with an opening like that, how could Tony possibly resist?

“Actually, it’s going to sound like a _lot_ of Stranges,” he says, and Strange rolls his eyes.

“Oh great, you’ve interrupted my lunch for _puns_ —“

“You kind of showed up from another universe and cursed me,” Tony interrupts. Strange’s diatribe cuts off instantly.

Tony raises his and Rogers’ hands. “Any chance you can lift it?”

“Oh! Well, in that case, you’d better come in.”

Strange leads them into his house (“ _Nope, no murder devices_ ,” Rogers whispers to Tony), and into a small, cluttered parlor, frowning speculatively at their hands the whole time.

“I recognize the spell, of course,” Strange begins, once they’re settled onto chairs and have been provided with some odd-tasting tea that Tony suspects may be a hallucinogen.

“It’s a common enough form of psychic magic, although generally, it’s used for, well…” Strange regards them with a gleam in his eyes that cannot mean anything good.

Rogers seems to agree, because it’s with a distinct air of stoic resignation that he asks, “Used for what?”

“Therapy.” And that gleam transforms into outright laughter.

“Seriously?” Tony snaps. “Stranger Things travels to an alternate universe to stop a cataclysmic event, and once he gets there, his big play is to force two random people into magical _therapy_? What the hell even _qualifies_ him for that?”

“Columbia Medical School,” Strange points out.

“Yeah but you were a _surgeon_ , not a—“ Tony tries to throw up his hands in frustration, but Rogers doesn’t move along with him, so instead it just comes out as a stifled shake of his fist. Trust Rogers not to appreciate the communicative panache of well-executed hand gesture. He’d probably keep his hands clasped behind his back at all times, if given the choice. No emoting allowed.

“See, this is why I don't go by ‘Doctor Stark,’” Tony grumbles. “It only leads to arrogance."

“Yes, thank God you’ve avoided that trap,” Rogers says, utterly deadpan.

Before Tony can deliver a devastating retort, which was definitely on the tip of his tongue, Rogers turns to Strange.

“If you know what spell it is, does that mean you can undo it?”

Strange, if possible, looks even more gleeful about admitting: “Unfortunately, no. Only the caster of the spell can safely remove it before its terms are fulfilled.”

“But _you’re_ the caster!” Tony practically shouts.

“Not at all. It was…what did you call him? ‘Stranger Things’? Cute.”

“ _He_ is _you_.”

“Not from a magical perspective,” Strange says cheerily. “The theory is actually fascinating—”

“How do things look from _this_ perspective—“ Tony starts, but Rogers holds Tony back from wringing Strange’s obnoxiously chipper neck. Just add that to the running list of things that are harder to manage with one hand.

“You said the spell can’t be removed until the terms are fulfilled?” Rogers muses, getting them all back on track. “What exactly are the terms?”

“Well, like I said, this particular spell is often used in interpersonal therapy situations, or even teambuilding retreats. Think of it like…a magical icebreaker exercise.”

“Insensitive,” Tony quips. “Cap’s standing _right_ here.”

Rogers rubs the bridge of his nose. Tony wonders if he’s capable of giving even an indestructible super soldier a headache.

“So what do we have to do to make it go away?” Rogers sighs.

“The purpose of this spell is to facilitate understanding. Sometimes it requires the participants to share something true; sometimes it requires them to work together to solve a problem; sometimes it’s set to release after a certain period of time. Only the original caster can say for certain.”

“Why would anyone ever _agree_ to this?” Tony asks, and can’t quite stop his hand from twitching in Rogers’.

“Why would you – Alternate Universe You – do this?” Rogers asks instead, after shooting Tony a glance that almost looks _concerned_. Damn it.

“From what you’ve told me, my counterpart seemed very concerned that the Avengers don’t exist. Perhaps he was trying to force that team to re-form. There _is_ something else about this spell…something a little unusual...” Strange concentrates on their hands for a moment, and then frowns.

“There’s a conditional worked into it. I don’t think it would have activated if just anyone had touched you, Stark.” He gives Rogers and Tony a speculative look. “I think the spell would have waited to activate, if and _only if_ Steve Rogers touches you. This suggests that I am right about my counterpart’s motivations, and that he specifically wants the _two of you_ to spend time together. Somehow, in his mind, this is the best way to defeat…what did you call him? Thanos? Hm. If this ‘Thanos’ is as big a threat as my counterpart seems to believe, I will need to do some research. Unless you have any further questions?”

Strange doesn’t actually wait for either of them to respond, before they’re both unceremoniously dumped back on the sidewalk in front of his house.

“Well, thank God you grabbed my hand, and not something else,” is all Tony can think to say.

Rogers is not amused.

Happy had managed to find a parking spot around the corner where he could wait for them to finish their totally useless conversation with Strange, so they only have to wait a few moments before he pulls up in the car.

“I guess it’s back to the Tower, Happy,” Tony says as he ducks into the back seat.

“Hold on,” Rogers interjects. “Why are you assuming we’ll go back to Stark Tower? I have an apartment in New York, too. I even live there most of the year. And all of its walls are still intact.”

“Joke’s on you, an open-plan design is very _in_ right now,” Tony shoots back. “And being stuck in Feelings Jail with you is already bad enough; like hell I’m _also_ spending my sentence in whatever tiny, blast-from-the-past Americana nightmare you call home.”

Two hours, twenty trips around the block because “we need a few more minutes, Hap,” and one extremely effective sit-in protest later, Tony finds himself standing in yet another brownstone, this time in Brooklyn.

Happy has been tasked with returning to the Tower and collecting Tony’s most indispensable possessions: namely, his travel tool kit, soldering iron, JARVIS’ portable interface, and his own coffee maker, because Tony would bet his entire fortune that Rogers makes crap coffee.

“What about clothes and all that?” Rogers had asked, and Tony and Happy had shared a look of mutual bafflement. Tony couldn’t remember ever in his life coordinating the packing of his clothes – which _sure_ , sounded bad once Rogers had _pointed it out_.

Since Rogers was still looking at him expectantly, he’d tried: “the…usual?”

And Happy had said, “You got it,” emphatically, before directing a pointed glare Rogers’ way. Rogers had made that face again, like he was getting a headache, and hadn’t made any further effort to intervene.

Admittedly, Rogers’ apartment isn’t as horrific as Tony had feared. Not that Tony will ever concede that point, _or_ ever concede that he lost a negotiation to a man with three hoodies in slightly different shades of blue hanging on his coatrack. But whoever chose this apartment for Rogers had done a good job. It’s beautiful, simple, and classic. The living room in which they’re standing has hardwood floors and high ceilings; the glimpse of the kitchen visible through the wide doorway suggests that it’s been recently renovated; and on the other side of the room is a small window nook. Instead of a loveseat, a small easel has been set up to face the window, while a collection of art supplies spills across the floor.

Which brings Tony to the characteristics of Rogers’ apartment that he can’t entirely get his head around. For one thing, there’s stuff _everywhere_ – which isn’t to say that the room looks dirty or uncared for, just _messy_. Instead of installing bookshelves, for instance, Rogers has stacked his enormous collection of books on the floor in the corner. Instead of using his desk for work, Rogers has spread what looks like half of SHIELD’s archives across the dining table. His desk, in turn, is covered in a collection of crumpled receipts, flyers, and junk mail. There’s a stack of canvases near the easel, and battered sketchpads piled next to those, but the walls themselves are bare.

Tony suspects that if anyone had needed to place a bet on the conditions of his and Rogers’ respective living spaces, they would have lost their money. Years of living with Rhodey – first at MIT and later, when Rhodey would spend his leave in Malibu – had forced Tony into military-neat habits. To everyone’s surprise (not least his own), he’d actually kept them up, even when Rhodey had finally gotten his own place. Tony suspects that his brain creates too much of its own chaos. He’s found that he can only really get things done when he can reach out for his wire strippers, or whatever, and can count on them to be sitting exactly where he expects.

Tony wonders idly what Rogers’ untidy apartment might say about his brain, but he’s learned his lesson about becoming too curious about Rogers’ bizarre motivations for doing things.

And anyway, they have work to do.

“Okay,” Tony announces. He experiences a brief pang of annoyance that he can’t clap his hands together the way that he wants to, but hopefully soon he won’t have to worry about that anymore. “Doctor Strange was charmingly nonspecific about what might actually break the spell, but he did say it was used for teambuilding. And, incidentally? Is there actually a market for magical corporate retreat facilitators? Should SI be planning a spell for HR’s next team picnic? Has Apple been doing this the whole time?”

“Tony.”

“Anyway. JARVIS and I put together a list of some typical teambuilding and icebreaker exercises. I figure maybe the “condition” or whatever could be fulfilled by one of these.”

He presents his tablet screen to Rogers with a flourish. Rogers scans the list, his eyebrows steadily rising.

“This is…very thorough. When did you have time to do this?”

“You trapped me in a car for _multiple hours_ , what did you think I was doing? Looking out the window?”

Rogers glances up from the tablet, and Tony could swear there’s a hint of a smile quirking up the corner of his mouth.

“I figure we can get through most of these by the time Happy shows up with my stuff,” Tony continues. “Best case scenario, he can just turn around and bring it all right back to Stark Tower.”

Honestly, Tony’s expecting some kind of fight about this, even though it’s _obviously_ the best approach to breaking the spell. He’d had a _really long_ car trip through New York City traffic to figure that out, so he knows his reasoning is sound. But Rogers has never let Tony’s _undeniable right-ness_ keep him from an argument before. And today in particular, it seems to be all they’ve been able to do. Tony knows perfectly well why _he’s_ been jumpy and irritable – he suppresses a shudder as his attention slides back to the gentle but unequivocal confinement of his left hand – but he’s not sure why Rogers has been so touchy. Maybe he’s just permanently like this.

He’s pretty surprised when Rogers just says, “Okay” and hands the tablet back.

By the time Happy arrives, Tony has learned that if Rogers were a tree, he would be “um…an oak? I guess,” that his favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla ( _ugh,_ he _would_ ), and that asking him what three things he would take to a desert island only results in a baffled stare, but when _Tony_ says “boat,” somehow _that’s_ against the rules. They had tried a trust fall, learned very quickly that trust falling becomes _way_ more complicated when the participants are also holding hands, and had silently agreed never to discuss it again. They’d also discarded participating in a scavenger hunt (even though JARVIS assured them that he would construct one “appropriate to the circumstances,” and honestly, Tony hopes to never learn what that means), building a structure out of toothpicks and marshmallows (Tony was all for it, but Rogers informed him with some relief that he didn’t have any marshmallows in his apartment), and anything involving singing. Tony is willing to take the chance that karaoke isn’t the key to unlocking this spell, and if it is, well, there are worse things than being stuck with Rogers for the rest of their lives. Like having to live with the memory of Captain America singing “Sweet Caroline.”

Happy’s appearance forces Tony to grapple with the very real possibility that they _might_ be stuck this way forever. Because, despite looking hopefully at their hands every time they reveal their favorite TV show (Tony: _Star Trek_ ; Rogers: finally names _Parks & Rec_ after much prodding, which raises about a thousand questions that Tony categorically refuses to ask), they haven’t gotten any closer to breaking the spell.

Now, they both stare at the pile of things Happy has left in Rogers’ foyer with distinct dismay.

“This is…a lot,” Rogers finally says, pushing lightly against the back of the rolling chair that Happy has brought from Tony’s workshop. They both watch it swivel a few times before it comes to a slow halt again.

“Oh, sorry, I’d really hate for my presence to disrupt the aesthetic you’ve cultivated here, between the piles of water-stained paperbacks and that entire shelf of chipped mugs over there.”

Rogers’ hand spasms in his, but when Tony glances at his face, he’s just frowning that familiar frown-of-vague-disapproval.

“I just meant…do you really think breaking the spell will take so long?” Rogers clarifies.

_That’s not at all what you meant_ , Tony thinks.

But all he says is: “JARVIS, clear my schedule, and activate Smart House Protocols. I’m not available to anyone who tries to call me, unless it’s a bona fide emergency. I’m talking killer mermaids swimming up the Hudson River, killer robots in Omaha, killer aliens landing in San Francisco…you seeing the pattern?”

“Yes sir, I believe I have correctly decoded your subtle nuances.”

Rogers presses his lips together to suppress a smile, and Tony glares at him in lieu of any effective way to glare at JARVIS. Which was a design flaw. Tony sees that now.

“Listen,” Tony tells Rogers distractedly, mind already consumed the problem of what spell-breaking method they should try next, after the icebreaker list was such a flop. “This whole spell thing? It’s a problem with a solution. We just have to find it. I happen to be quite good at problem-solving – dunno if you’ve heard that about me – but I’m at my best with metal in my hands. Do you mind if I, y’know, tinker a little? I figure we’d want ‘at my best’ on this one, but if it bothers you, I don’t have to pull out the whole…” He gestures at the crates of assorted electronic equipment that Happy had obligingly lugged up Rogers’ stairs.

“I’m not bothered,” Rogers says quickly. His hand twitches again.

“O-kay,” Tony says. “In that case, I can set up on your dining room table. It looks big enough. We’ll just have to shift some of the stuff –“ Tony moves toward the aforementioned table, but he’s pulled up short when Rogers continues to just stand there. He’s staring at his table with an expression that, on anyone else, Tony would call trepidation.

Tony gives him a narrow look. “Why did you insist we come back here if you hate having people in your space so much?”

“I don’t hate having people in my space,” Rogers says evenly, and Tony might’ve even believed it, if not for the fact that Rogers’ right hand is apparently as good as a lie detector; it twitches every time. “I’ll clear the table off for you later, but can’t we take a minute to sit before we start rushing everywhere? The spell’s not gonna go anywhere. Are you hungry?”

“Well aren’t you just the consummate host,” Tony says, mostly to see how Rogers will react. His hypothesis is confirmed: Rogers’ hand relaxes minutely, and he gives Tony the same charming smile that graces the USO posters lining Howard’s old study.

“My mother’d never forgive me if I wasn’t.”

_Interesting_. Rogers is definitely weird about his apartment, and hiding it. He’d grabbed on to that excuse too quickly for it to be the whole story. And five minutes ago, he’d been just as desperate as Tony for the spell to be broken. Tony had perfected the art of misdirection by the age of 18. Does Rogers really think he can fool him?

Instead of saying any of that, though, Tony agrees to take a break.

Which is how they end up sitting as far away from each other on Rogers’ sofa as they can reasonably get while still being joined by their hands. Rogers has conjured a book – Ishiguro’s _Never Let Me Go_ , judging by the cover – out from under a pile of bills, smudged pencil sketches on napkins, and a manila folder filled with ancient back-issues of _The Village Voice_. He pulls a bookmark out from the middle of the book and rests his feet against a battered coffee table so that he can prop the book up against his knees and turn the pages one-handed.

Tony meanwhile has pulled up a set of blueprints on his tablet that he’s supposed to be approving for R&D. He can’t help but sneak glances at Rogers instead. Over the years of their reluctant allyship, Tony has seen Rogers striding, running, fighting, and glaring. But Tony is struggling to remember if he’s ever seen Rogers like this: un-self-conscious, his body arranged for comfort rather than posed for intimidation, or preparing for a deadly flurry of movement.

Tony forgets about the SI blueprints entirely, captivated as he is by the movement of Rogers’ eyes across the page, the slightly awkward-looking angle of his knees, the flex of his toes in their plain white socks. It’s just so _weird_. Of course Rogers wears socks – must logically have been wearing them every time he and Tony ever spoke. But even faced with this very concrete evidence of socks, Tony is struggling to wrap his mind around the sight of them.

Tony blinks and wrenches his eyes back to his tablet. He seriously needs to pull himself together. He’s glad Rogers is distracted enough by his book that he hasn’t caught Tony staring at his feet like some kind of weirdo.

Tony manages to concentrate on the blueprints for a few minutes, but then Rogers shifts to adjust his grip on the book, and the movement causes him to press his hand lightly against Tony’s. An instant later, they’re back to the same loose hold as before, their hands touching as little as possible while remaining magically linked, but it’s already too late for Tony’s focus.

He’d managed to force himself to forget that their hands are touching, but suddenly it’s all he can think about. Especially now that the apartment is so quiet around him. The only noise is the intermittent whisper of one of Rogers’ pages turning. It feels as intrusive as an alarm. And in the silent gaps between pages, Tony’s own mind starts to spiral louder and louder.

The barest touch of Rogers’ skin against his, those hints of pressure, the scrape of their palms…it all makes Tony want to twitch away. His skin is crawling with the need to move.

_Calm down_ , he orders himself, and forces his hand to stay loose and still in Rogers’ grip. He focuses on the count of his breath, in and out, and nothing else.

“Can’t you stay still for five minutes?” A harsh voice breaks into his rhythm, and it’s so close to what he himself was thinking that at first, he worries that he’s the one who’d spoken. But when he glances around, it’s to find Rogers frowning at him from his side of the sofa.

“What?” Tony gasps ( _fuck_ , he hadn’t meant to sound so breathless). Rogers nods down at his free hand, and that’s when Tony realizes he’s been tapping his fingers frenetically against the arm of the sofa.

“Excuse me if I don’t have a lot of practice being confined to one place,” Tony snaps ( _a lie_ ). “I think better on my feet” ( _the truth_ ).

“Well I’m not letting you drag me around my own apartment just because you want to pace,” Rogers says flatly.

“Good thing I didn’t ask you to.”

“You just—” Rogers closes his mouth and then heaves a sigh. “It’s getting late. Maybe we should try to get some sleep; come back to this in the morning.”

“Why not.” Tony makes no effort to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

Tony figures out quickly that with their hands trapped together, they can’t actually change out of their shirts and into pajamas.

“Yeah, I realized that,” Rogers says ruefully when Tony points it out. “It’s not a big deal. I’ve had to keep the uniform on for longer, and under worse conditions. At least we’re not in a swamp.”

It suddenly occurs to Tony that Rogers might not _usually_ wear his uniform while he sits on his couch and reads books in the early evening, like he’d done tonight. At the time, the sight hadn’t struck Tony as strange at all. Tony has never seen Rogers out of his uniform, and so, like a child who lacks object permanence, he’d subconsciously believed that Rogers-in-normal-clothes just didn’t exist. Kind of like his socks.

“We could always rip the seams in the right sleeve,” Tony suggests. “I know your suit is reinforced, but there’s gotta be something in my bag of tricks that’s capable of cutting through it.”

“It’s fine!” Rogers says, looking horrified, like he’s worried that Tony’s gonna pull out a pair of scissors from some hidden pocket and just start cutting. “Like I said, I’ve slept in the uniform plenty of times.”

“If you’re sure,” Tony says doubtfully. He himself is only wearing a regular t-shirt that he’s perfectly fine with destroying, but he feels like it would be weird for him to be shirtless while Rogers is in full Captain America uniform. At least Tony can trade his jeans for a pair of flannel pants.

They move around each other awkwardly in Rogers’ small bathroom, jockeying for space at the sink.

“Y’know, I was held captive in a cave for months, but all the indignities I suffered at the hands of terrorists still take a _distant second_ to having Captain America as my bathroom buddy,” Tony grumbles, the thirty-fourth time Rogers elbows him in the side while brushing his teeth.

When they finally make it to Rogers’ bedroom, Tony finds it just as cluttered as the rest of his apartment. Thankfully, the neatly made, queen-sized bed is mostly clear of the odds-and-ends that cover every other surface in the room.

“Um.” For the first time in Tony’s considerable memory, he sees Rogers falter in the face of an obstacle.

“Relax, Cap. I’m an expert at taking people to bed. There’s really nothing to it,” Tony says, and thoroughly enjoys watching Rogers’ discomfort deepen.

His statement is both the obvious truth, and also, in a sense, a lie. Tony is indeed very good at sex. It’s not a boast if it’s true. Even more than the mechanics of it, Tony’s good at performing the dances that happen _around_ sex. He’s had enough sex with strangers that he’s learned how to defuse the awkwardness that tends to arise during these kinds of moments of transition: a first kiss, moving to the bedroom, taking off clothes, getting into bed (or elsewhere. When applicable).

…Not that he and Captain America are about to have sex, of course. It’s just that the _genre_ of awkwardness feels similar.

But it’s also true that what he and Rogers are planning to do with this bed – namely, sleep – is something with which Tony does _not_ have a lot of experience. Even when he was having a lot of sex with strangers, friends, and acquaintances alike, he’d always hated sleeping in someone else’s bed. He has enough difficulty sleeping as it is. The thoughts spiraling through his brain – the ones he can never quite turn off, only slow down – often keep him awake late into the night.

When he was a child, he’d driven Edwin Jarvis crazy (and his parents crazier) by climbing up onto the kitchen cabinets at 5am to find cereal, or wandering outside in the dark because he was bored. When he and Pepper had dated – briefly and disastrously – she’d had to get used to his tendency to sit bolt upright in bed and dash over to his lab without any explanation, or turn on his bedside lamp to scribble something down in a notebook, completely forgetting that she was sleeping next to him.

The sleeping thing hadn’t been the reason they’d broken up, of course. After the Battle of New York, it had suddenly felt like every asshole who could sew a mask and a cape was calling himself a supervillain, and there hadn’t been anyone else Tony could call to help deal with them. Everything had to take a back seat to Iron Man, including Pepper. They’d both understood, even if it had hurt at the time.

But sometimes Tony wondered if _some_ of it wasn’t also about Pepper wanting a boyfriend who could let her sleep a solid eight hours uninterrupted.

And since Pepper – which, oh god, had been _years_ ago – Tony hadn’t actually _slept_ with another person. So no. In a very literal sense, Tony is _not_ an expert at sleeping with people.

But Rogers doesn’t need to know that.

“I was just wondering if you had, um, a preference for which side.” Rogers doesn’t quite meet Tony’s eyes as he says it.

“I’m not sure we really have a choice.” Tony raises their clasped hands significantly. “Unless you’re _far_ more flexible than I’ve given you credit for.”

_God_ , and now that he’s thinking about Pepper, he’s remembering all the hours he’d spent tossing and turning while she slept, trying to get comfortable without waking her, or waiting for her to fall deeply enough sleep that he could slip out of bed and escape downstairs again.

If Tony can’t sleep tonight, he won’t be able to do either of those things, will he? He’ll just have to lie there quietly and let his mind tear itself apart.

“Right. Obviously,” Rogers says awkwardly.

Tony glances over at him in shock, certain for a moment that he’d said what he was thinking out loud without noticing – it happens more often that he’d like – but then he remembers what they’d been talking about.

“Sorry if you have a deep attachment to the left side of your bed, or something,” he says.

“It’s fine,” Rogers says quickly.

They both realize simultaneously that they have to somehow climb into bed with only one free hand apiece. Maybe they’ll both just stand here, holding hands and staring blankly at the bed in front of them, until the sun rises. At least that would solve Tony’s sleeping problems.

They manage it eventually, with the exception of a fraught moment when Rogers zigs and Tony zags, and it bounces them both back into the middle of the bed. Tony kicks Rogers in the knee, which is a total accident, and Rogers elbows him in the stomach, which totally is not, but since the whole ordeal concludes with them both lying on the bed and still speaking to each other, Tony considers it a success.

“Well, uh, goodnight,” Tony offers. Rogers doesn’t answer. Tony glances over to find him staring up at the ceiling with his lips pressed together into a thin line. Tony wonders if Rogers is maybe still pissed about Tony accidentally strangling them both with the top sheet.

“Just so you know, I—” Rogers starts, in a strange, flat tone, but then doesn’t continue.

“Cap?”

Rogers blinks and takes in a sharp breath. “Never mind, just thinking aloud. Goodnight, Stark.”

Tony resigns himself to worrying all night about what Rogers was going to say, probably while also redesigning the Iron Man armor in his head, one of his go-to insomnia aids.

At least Rogers’ bed is comfortable, and there’s enough ambient city light coming through the bedroom windows that it washes the room in a gentle, velvety darkness (nothing like the pitch black of a cave). And Rogers is an oddly soothing presence next to him: his body like a levee between Tony and the windows; his breath a slow, even metronome.

_The connection between the arc reactor and the boot repulsors could be more efficient_ , Tony thinks. _There’s gotta be a way to reduce the rate of muon energy loss_ …

He’s halfway through a calculation when he falls suddenly and deeply asleep.

***

But the thing is, Tony _has_ always been a light sleeper. And after Afghanistan, the slightest noise can wake him up instantly.

So even though he falls asleep uncharacteristically quickly (because apparently Captain America has soporific powers), when Tony opens his eyes in the middle of the night, he assumes that Rogers must have made some small sound in his sleep. Everything is quiet now, though, so Tony hopes idly that he’ll be able to fall asleep again, since he’ll be stuck in the bed either way.

It takes him a few moments to register that the room isn’t just quiet, it’s _silent_. Rogers can’t be asleep; he must be holding himself deliberately still. Now that Tony’s thinking about it, he can indeed feel the tension in Rogers’ hand.

Tony turns his head. Even in the dark, he can tell that Rogers is awake and staring blankly up at the ceiling again.

“Y’alright?”’

“Go back to sleep, Stark,” Rogers sighs.

“Can’t,” Tony lies. “Did you sleep at all? Is this whole thing—“ he tugs at Rogers’ hand “—keeping you up?”

“With the serum, I don’t actually need that much sleep,” Rogers says, which Tony notices answers neither of his questions.

“Well, if you can’t sleep, and I can’t sleep, then maybe we should both not-sleep together.”

“ _What_?” Rogers swivels his head quickly enough to give an ordinary human whiplash, his eyes wide. Tony frowns and runs back through his own words. And of course, the _one_ time in his life he didn’t _intend_ innuendo…

“I meant we could get up and _do_ something. Like make coffee, or work on the spell. _Jesus_. Who knew Captain America had such a filthy mind.”

“I- I don’t,” Rogers stammers, and even in the dark, Tony can tell he’s blushing. “I mean—“

“Don’t worry about it, Rogers, I’m flattered. Didn’t realize I was your type,” Tony quips.

“Well, you don’t know me that well,” Rogers retorts evenly, but Tony doesn’t miss the hint of tension in his expression.

And… _wow_. He’d been expecting Rogers to roll his eyes, or possibly, depending on how “40s” he was feeling this early in the morning, get defensive and angry. What Tony had categorically _not_ expected was for Rogers to sound like he’d _thought about it too._

Tony is suddenly, viscerally aware of their respective positions: they’d both turned to face the other, and even inched closer to see better in the dark, so that now there’s only maybe a foot of space between them. Their hands are still clasped, and as much as Tony knows they have no choice about that, it suddenly feels like such an _intimate_ gesture to be making now, in the middle of the night, under Rogers’ blankets.

“Yeah, I definitely need coffee,” he says, but he squeezes Rogers’ hand just a bit as he says it. The tension in Rogers’ expression and in his grip eases slightly. His lips quirk up into a small smile.

“It’s four in the morning,” he says.

“Exactly,” Tony retorts. “At 4am, you have exactly two choices: sleep or coffee. Trust me, this is a hypothesis I’ve tested extensively.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Rogers’ smile grows a bit wider.

Thankfully, Happy had set up Tony’s own espresso maker in the kitchen before he’d departed, and so all Tony has to do is measure out the coffee and water and press a few buttons, tasks he can accomplish one-handed. Rogers watches Tony work with a funny look on his face, which Tony resolutely ignores until the aroma of brewed coffee gives him a placebo effect of caffeine.

“Okay, out with it,” Tony sighs, and definitely does _not_ rest one hand defensively on the body of the coffee maker. “In your day, did people make coffee in the bathtub like Prohibition gin? And you had to carry the bathtub uphill both ways? No doubt this is just the last in a long line of capitalist extravagances I’ve forced on you, a man of the people?”

Rogers doesn’t turn away from his consideration of the coffee maker. “You’re right. A machine? That boils water? Feels like witchcraft to me.”

“Well played, and fuck you too,” Tony retorts pleasantly. “What _were_ you going to say, then?”

“I was going to ask about its design – you _did_ build this yourself, didn’t you?” Rogers turns his head slowly, away from the coffee maker and toward Tony.

Have his eyes always been so _blue_? Is this an early morning light thing? Tony swears they haven’t looked like this before. After all, Tony kinda has a reputation for noticing stupidly gorgeous people when they’re standing right in front of him – there’s no way he would have _missed_ how pretty Captain America’s eyes are. Obviously Tony’s always known Rogers was attractive, but there’s All-American Peak of Human Perfection attractive, and then there’s Watching Tony Over A Chipped Coffee Mug Early in the Morning, Steam Curling Around His Cheekbones _attractive_.

“Stark?” Rogers prompts.

“Actually, JARVIS found it on ebay,” Tony quips. Rogers drops his eyes with a sigh.

“Right.”

God, Tony really needs to get his shit together, here; his mind is rapidly spiraling out of his own control.

“Look, I actually have some work I need to get done, so…”

“I’m not stopping you,” Rogers retorts, words clipped. It’s a tone of voice that Tony is used to hearing over comms during Rogers’ fights with HYDRA, but which Rogers tends to keep resolutely under wraps in other, non-superheroic circumstances. Great.

They bring their coffee over to Rogers’ couch, adopting similar positions to last night: Rogers with a book and Tony with his tablet. And once again, the minute Tony sits down, he starts to feel that same visceral and irrational need to _get up again_.

_It’s not real_ , Tony reminds himself, _just overactive neurons. I don’t actually_ have _to do anything._ That is, after all, one of the primary benefits of being Tony Stark: that he doesn’t have to do things unless he wants to. And what he _wants_ to do is sit here quietly and review R&D’s newest alternative energy project proposal.

Yes, he might _prefer_ to pace when he thinks, just as he might _prefer_ to keep his hands free (he barely even wears gloves in the winter, much to Pepper’s chagrin. They’ve argued endlessly over the fact that the Iron Man gauntlets are _different_. They’re just as much a part of his hands as his skin and tendons. They’re not glorified _mittens_ ).

But preferences are irrelevant in the face of reality, and Tony’s _reality_ right now involves sitting on this goddamn couch and marking up R&D’s proposal.

_Based on these calculations, prototype will explode when turned on_ , he types. It’s easily fixable, though, with a few tweaks to the design. They just have to…have to…

Tony stares at his tablet. The math swims before his eyes. A language that he’s spoken intuitively almost since birth has suddenly become incomprehensible. It’s a simple correction – he _knows_ it’s simple – but he’s trying to run the mental calculations and all he can think about is the fact that he’s stuck on this stupid couch until Rogers decides otherwise.

“Stark?” Just like the night before, Rogers’ voice cuts through the increasing volume of his thoughts, but this time, there’s an uncharacteristic hesitance to Rogers’ pronunciation of his name, a slight softening of the usually abrupt consonants. “Are you okay?”

And Tony knows for a _fact_ that he hasn’t been fidgeting, has refused to let himself, so how did Rogers know…

“You’re, um, kinda vibrating,” Rogers says.

“I’m not,” Tony retorts stupidly, and grabs for his half-full coffee cup in the hopes that the motion will distract them both, until he realizes that his hand is shaking too much for him to be able to drink from it. Perfect.

“I don’t hate your couch or anything,” he explains. Rogers raises his eyebrows, gently quizzical.

“I…didn’t assume you did.”

“It’s a perfectly ordinary, comfortable couch. And if I have to sit on it for one more minute, I am absolutely going to tear it apart.”

“ _Think better on my feet_ ,” Rogers repeats Tony’s own words from last night, giving Tony a slow, steady look, the kind that always seems to pierce right through him. Usually, this kind of look presages Rogers saying something devastatingly accurate about Tony’s general lack of moral character, and Tony waits for whatever judgment Rogers is about to dispense.

But this time, Rogers just says: “Come on.”

“What?”

Rogers is standing now, tugging Tony gently to his feet as well.

“I have an idea.”

He pulls Tony over to the rolling chair that Happy had brought from Stark Tower, and which has been sitting in the corner of Rogers’ living room with the rest of Tony’s lab scraps. Rogers sits down on the chair, props his feet against its wheels, and then gives Tony a small smile, the Captain America equivalent of anyone else throwing out their arms and proclaiming “ta-da!”

Tony, always loath to admit he doesn’t understand something, stares back silently. Rogers’ smile twitches into something distinctly smug, like he’s enjoying this opportunity to baffle Tony.

“Now you can move around, and I can be along for the ride,” Rogers finally explains.

It’s not…a terrible idea. Huh.

“Thought you weren’t willing to let me drag you around your apartment?” Tony points out. Rogers just shrugs.

“I like that couch too. I’d rather it stayed intact, if we can possibly help it.”

To Tony’s surprise, this plan actually works pretty well. At first, he’s still self-conscious about Rogers’ company and the ever-present weight of Rogers’ hand in his, but as Tony moves, the easier it is for Rogers rolling along behind him to fade quietly into the background. Soon, Tony is pacing in his usual abrupt zig-zags, dictating notes to JARVIS’ portable interface on his tablet, and it’s almost like he’s back in his own lab.

“No, no, the workaround they’ve proposed to minimize energy discharge is inefficient; it’ll just drive up costs in the long run. Let me—” Tony is already pulling his soldering iron and one of the old energy cell prototypes out of Happy’s boxes. It seems like Happy had just swept everything on the surface of Tony’s desk into a crate, and since that’s exactly what Tony would have done, he can’t fault the instinct.

Tony turns toward the nearest flat surface, which happens to be the table that Rogers had refused to let Tony clear last night. He also comes abruptly face-to-face with Rogers himself, who is watching Tony intently from his rolling perch.

He waits for Rogers to get into another snit about Tony disrupting his space, but instead, Rogers just nods curiously at the supplies Tony’s managed to collect: “How are you going to do that one-handed?”

_Shit_. Tony had forgotten – _how_ had he forgotten? – that he’s down a hand.

“Whatever. They should be able to figure it out from my notes – I don’t need a demonstration to prove it. JARVIS, send the file over to R&D.”

“Sir, I hesitate to interject—“

“Then don’t. The science is sound, JARVIS.”

“I agree, sir. But you asked me to inform you if the emergency systems at Stark Tower were activated.”

Tony stops dead in the center of the living room, so abruptly that Rogers’ chair keeps rolling until he bumps up against Tony’s thigh.

“ _What_?”

Tony reaches for the activation button on his Iron Man wristbands, but hits Rogers’ hand instead. Damn. Even if Tony’s left gauntlet could mold itself around Rogers’ hand as well, which it hasn’t actually been programmed to do, how is Tony supposed to _fly_ like this? Let alone fight?

“It seems, sir, that a small fire has been started in your workshop.”

“I’m gonna need more details than that. Talk to me, J – is Stark Tower under attack?”

JARVIS hesitates, and Tony frowns.

“I have gathered that Ms. Potts was not pleased to hear that I have been screening her calls. I attempted to explain to her that your Smart House Protocols prevent her from contacting you, except in cases of harm or immediate peril. Ms. Potts seems to have…taken that as a challenge. I am very sorry, sir, I can assure you I did not intend—”

Tony takes a deep breath, and can’t help but let out a bit of a laugh on the exhale. “It’s fine, JARVIS. Even the best of intentions are no match for Pepper. You’d better put her through.”

A few seconds later, Pepper’s irate face appears on the screen of Tony’s tablet.

“Pep! To what do I owe this arson?”

“Be lucky all I did was wave some paper around the smoke detector,” Pepper retorts. “When I’ve imagined what it would be like to set fire to your possessions, it’s never been so well-contained.”

“Pepper, you are, as always, a paragon of restraint and good judgment. Is there some _reason_ you wanted to talk to me so badly you turned to crime? Usually it tends to go the other way around.”

“Is there— _Tony_ , are you serious?” Pepper practically growls.

“Almost never, but in this case…yes?”

Tony looks closer at his screen, and now he can see that small wisps of strawberry blond hair are escaping Pepper’s ponytail. As Tony knows from long years of experience, this is the first and most subtle of Pepper’s warning signs that something has gone seriously wrong.

Tony tries to work out what he might’ve done recently to make Pepper not just pissed at him, but _worried_ about something. Obviously the spell situation is a pretty big deal for _Tony_ , but even if Pepper had known about it, Tony can’t see what possible impact it could have on her at SI.

And when he’d talked to her yesterday, before the whole spell debacle, she’d assigned him a fairly long to-do list of boring SI tasks, but she hadn’t mentioned that any of them were terribly urgent. Plus, she usually gives Tony at least a 48-hour window to ignore and/or forget about urgent things before she makes any effort to track him down.

“Can you please explain to me,” Pepper says evenly, like she’s praying for patience, “why you were photographed yesterday afternoon _holding hands_ with Captain Rogers in the middle of a city street? And then promptly disappeared to parts unknown?”

Okay, when put like _that_ , Tony can see how the spell situation might, in theory, have an impact on SI. He winces.

“It’s…kind of a long story?”

“CliffsNotes, please,” Pepper demands crisply.

“Okay, so there was this wizard from another dimension, and in conclusion, me’n’Rogers are cursed to hold hands until we break a magic spell.”

Tony pans his tablet camera from his own face, down to his and Rogers’ still-joined hands, and then over to Rogers, perched cross-legged on the rolling chair with his book in his other hand. Rogers gives Pepper an apologetic smile and waves the book at her in greeting.

“That is…not the theory that Twitter has run with.” Pepper is visibly shaken. Her eyes continually return to Rogers’ image on her own screen like she thinks if she glances away, maybe he’ll have disappeared by the time she looks back.

“Well, that’s OK. I’m sure someone on Reddit got it right,” Tony tries to reassure her.

“Oh, Tony, you don’t understand.” Pepper lets out a sharp giggle. Then she pulls her hair out of its ponytail, runs her hand through it, and ties it back again. And oh _no_ , that is the second warning sign of Pepper’s Intense Stress and Misery.

“The Internet thinks you’re _dating_ now,” she continues. “SI’s been getting requests for comments all day.”

“Well, fucking tell them we’re _not_ ,” is all Tony can think to say, which, judging by Pepper’s patronizing look, was not a constructive suggestion. Rogers, meanwhile, has gone very stiff and silent and wide-eyed in his chair, so it doesn’t look like Tony’s about to get help from that quarter any time soon.

He tries again. “Tell them we were holding hands in the performance of our superhero-ly duties. It was necessary for the fight against evil.”

“Tony. The last time you and Rogers were seen together, the city was attacked by aliens. And you think the public will be _less_ concerned to hear that Captain America and Iron Man were cozying up together on some random street in the middle of the Village because they were _fighting evil_?”

“It is the truth, ma’am,” Rogers interjects, and Tony can practically _feel_ Pepper softening in the face of that earnest tone. And then he adds, totally deadpan: “Approximately.”

“’Approximate’ doesn’t matter much if people are panicking,” Pepper explains, almost gently, like Rogers needs to be guided through the concept of “social media,” or possibly “lying.” Rogers stares at her in polite confusion, and as much as Tony would love to sit back and let this game play out, he doesn’t want Pepper any more irritated than she already is.

“He’s messing with you,” he explains to her.

Rogers shoots him a startled glance, and then his mouth twitches up into another one of those small, slightly wry smiles. It’s there for an instant, and then gone again by the time he turns back to Pepper.

“So what do you suggest we do?” he asks her, which is the closest Tony thinks he’s ever heard Rogers come to an apology.

“I hate to say it,” and Pepper actually _winces_ , “but I think our best bet for preventing mass chaos and plummeting SI stocks is to, uh…roll with it?”

“Roll with it? What d’you mean, ‘roll with it’?” Tony demands. “You cannot possibly be suggesting what I _think_ you’re suggesting. Which is that Captain America should pretend to be gay, and in a relationship with _me_ , of all people, and that somehow that will _reduce_ the chaos of this situation?”

Pepper just raises her eyebrows.

“I mean,” Tony continues, in an effort to reintroduce sanity to these proceedings, “the Internet has known I was bisexual since before there was an Internet, but _Captain America_ coming out is a whole different kind of media circus! Not to mention Cap would have lie about it for basically the rest of his life. Just because someone somewhere took a photo of us holding hands? C’mon, Pepper, _I’m_ supposed to be the one with all the bad ideas in this partnership.”

“Well, actually,” Rogers coughs. “As it happens, I wouldn’t be lying. Uh. Approximately.”

Tony stares at him.

So the painfully attractive man that Tony is forced to sleep with for the foreseeable future – and who is also _Captain America_ , can’t forget that part – is queer. Cool. This information will in no way cause Tony any additional problems or stress.

And then Tony realizes with a jolt of self-consciousness that he’s basically greeted Rogers coming out to them (approximately) with dead silence, and rushes to respond in _some way_.

“Thanks for um, trusting me with—“ (Oh, _god_ , the silence was better).

“It’s fine,” Rogers interrupts whatever horrifying thing Tony was about to say, and Tony is _so_ glad to be able to shut up again. “And I was planning on doing this anyway. Not _this_ , obviously, but some sort of statement. Would’ve done it sooner, honestly, but SHIELD’s whole PR team turned out to be Nazis, so. It got put on the backburner.”

“Okay, well, if you’re sure,” Tony says slowly. He turns back to Pepper, already mentally working through the logistics. “We can’t appear in public, obviously, what with the supernatural leash we’re both on. We seem _so_ clingy and weird. Which would really mess with my whole vibe.”

What Tony doesn’t say – but assumes they already know – is that the information that he and Rogers are both down a hand would be like catnip to evildoers.

“Pepper, you’ll have to release one of those statements that talks about “privacy” a lot. You’ve gotta have one ready to go, after that whole Beijing debacle…”

“Of course, Tony. But there is one other thing.” Pepper winces. “The Maria Stark Foundation charity gala is on Friday night.”

“But that’s _days_ away,” Tony blurts out.

“Made a lot of progress on the spell so far, have you?” Pepper asks, voice dry as the desert. “Feeling utterly, 100% certain that it’ll be solved by Friday?”

And Tony realizes that in some distant, unexamined part of his mind, he _had_ been certain. Or rather, he hadn’t wanted to believe that there was _any way_ the spell could last longer than a few hours. He’s not sure he’ll be able to bear more than that.

“Thanks so much for that vote of confidence, Potts,” is what he says instead. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we have some very urgent spell-breaking to get back to. Especially now that we’re on a time limit.”

“Hey, the Foundation gala has been on the books for months. Maybe you should’ve had your wizard check your Google Calendar before he decided _this week_ was a great time to curse you.”

“ _Bye_ , Pepper.”

Tony manages to wait a full three seconds after he hangs up with Pepper to say: “Well. Fuck.”

Rogers chuckles. “Technically it’ll only be ‘fake fuck.’”

And Tony just does _not_ have the energy to grapple with just how attractive he finds Cap swearing – deadpan and a little cheeky as he infuses Tony’s thoughtless use of a commonplace curse word with renewed, filthy meaning.

“Obviously,” Tony says quickly.

Rogers gives him a strange look, and Tony thinks he’s totally busted, but instead Rogers just says: “You know, if we really think we’ll be stuck like this for days, maybe we should talk about what’ll happen if we have to fight like this.”

And Tony is more than happy to change the subject from fucking, fake or otherwise.

“I _have_ been playing with nanotechnology lately,” he muses. “I’ve been thinking about ways I might incorporate it into the suit. There’s a preliminary prototype I’ve been tinkering with in my spare time. It’s possible that a gauntlet made out of nanoparticles could adjust itself to form around both our hands. We’d still have to seriously coordinate our fighting styles, but the main snag to this plan is that I’d have to finish the prototype for the housing unit by hand.”

“Well, I have my chair, and I can be quiet while you work.”

“May I remind you, _I only have one hand_.”

Rogers shrugs; Tony finds the gesture only mildly infuriating.

“Between the both of us, we have two free hands. I’ll just have to help you.”

Tony lets out a sharp bark of laughter. “Yeah, no. Never gonna happen, Rogers. Not in a million years.”

“That’s funny, I didn’t take you for someone who’d dismiss a workable solution before he’s even tried it,” Rogers says. Tony narrows his eyes at the studied placidity of his tone.

“I do if it’s stupid,” Tony retorts, which admittedly is not his most brilliant comeback, but he’s already feeling a familiar shortness of breath even _imagining_ Rogers touching his tools. His armor. _God_ , he can’t.

He knows his reaction is bordering on the ridiculous. Hadn’t he and Yinsin built the armor together in the first place? Tony’s never forgotten – never let himself forget – that the first Iron Man was a collaboration. So why is he finding it so impossible to agree to another one?

“But it’s _not_ a stupid idea. It’s… _obvious_.” Rogers’ voice is starting to rise in a combination of bafflement and anger. “It’s not like we have a lot of other options!”

“Cutting-edge nanotechnology is _obvious_ , he says.”

And yep, the bafflement is gone; it’s just pure anger in Rogers’ expression now. His blue eyes are perhaps the iciest Tony has ever seen them.

“Oh, I see. It’s not that you think the _idea’s_ stupid. It’s that you think _I_ am.”

Tony doesn’t think Rogers is stupid, actually. Surprise of the century. And in the face of Rogers’ obvious hurt, Tony suddenly regrets the insinuation.

“Rogers—"

But Rogers barrels right over him.

“Of course, how could I ever forget,” he bites out. His hand is clenched around Tony’s. Not tightly enough to hurt. Even when he’s clearly furious – and not paying the slightest bit of attention to their clasped hands, Tony would put money on it – Rogers doesn’t use any more strength than a regular human would. “You’ve certainly never hid the fact that you think I’m an idiot.”

“What--?”

“Just because I’m not a genius like you doesn’t mean I’m useless! I can _do_ this, Tony!”

The sound of his first name slams into Tony like an ocean wave.

Meanwhile, Rogers looks determined, and still a little angry, and like he has no idea that Tony’s real name has just slipped out of his mouth for perhaps the first time. _Lucky him_ , Tony thinks, because it’s all _he_ can hear.

“Fine,” he finds himself saying. “We’ll try it.”

***

It goes terribly. As Tony knew it would. And it’s got absolutely nothing to do with Rogers. Which Tony also knew.

Rogers carefully moves all the random detritus from his dining table to various other places in the room as though they were un-defused bombs rather than, like, three identical takeout menus from the Thai place down the street.

Once the table is cleared, Tony stabilizes his left gauntlet with a clamp and lays out the collection of tools he thinks he’ll need. In theory, once he gets the nanotechnology working properly, they’ll form a full suit of armor by fanning outward from one central point, but for now, Tony will settle for installing a modified housing unit onto his left wrist so that the rest of his armor can stay as-is. And hey, this is basically like a built-in opportunity to field test the nanotech. Bright side.

Tony tries to slip into the flow mindset that he can usually access easily whenever he starts an engineering project. But of course, that’s exactly when things start to go wrong.

Rogers’ presence at Tony’s side, looking over his shoulder, proves to be _incredibly_ distracting. And not just because Tony always finds Rogers – _still wearing_ his absurdly skin-tight uniform, blue eyes alert and interested, stupid blond hair swept across his forehead -- distracting on some level. Instead, this is the kind of arousal that feels a lot less like pleasure and a lot more like panic.

Rogers sways a little closer to Tony’s body to get a better look at the housing unit, and Tony thinks “ _danger_.” His brain blares at him to keep the inner-workings of his armor hidden from this intruder into his space. The awareness that Rogers is _watching his every move_ crackles over his skin.

And Tony knows perfectly well that Cap isn’t any sort of threat. The very idea is _laughable._ But he also can’t force his mental alarms to quiet down.

Rogers, ironically, proves to be very skilled at intricate engineering work. He listens carefully to what Tony asks him to do, and his movements as he carries out those instructions are deft and precise, no hesitation or tremor in his hand, even though, out loud, he’s self-deprecating about his own skills.

In truth, _Tony_ is the one who keeps fucking up. He’s distracted and awkward, the muscle memory for tasks he’s done a million times suddenly deserting him. At one point he actually _drops_ a screwdriver. Onto the _floor_. Like an _amateur_. Later, he gives Rogers instructions that, if carried out, probably would have started a small electrical fire. Tony only barely catches his own mistake before Rogers actually does it.

He also has to stop himself from flinching every time Rogers touches any part of the gauntlet, a nervous tic he thinks he’s doing a great job of hiding until Rogers puts down his pliers with a tiny sigh.

“We don’t have to keep doing this if you don’t want to.” His shoulders are slumped, like he’s already blaming himself for somehow not doing things to Tony’s exacting standards, when it should be obvious to everyone that the problem here is that Tony’s lost his goddamn mind.

“It’s okay,” Tony says instantly. “It’s just…y’know. The armor. It’s kind of personal.”

“You let Happy pack it up and bring it here,” Rogers points out, far too astutely for Tony’s liking.

“That’s _Happy_ ,” is all Tony can think to say.

“Right.” Rogers presses his lips into a sad line. “I just thought maybe working on the armor would help. Give you something to focus on aside from—” he tugs at their hands. “Since it’s clear how much you hate it.”

Tony stares at him. “Unlike you, who’s found being forced to hold hands with me a total joy?”

“Yeah, but I mean, you _really_ hate it. I don’t think you’ve relaxed since it happened yesterday. Your hand keeps tensing up, did you know that? And it’s not just the armor that you don’t want touched – you jump or flinch practically any time I touch _you_. At first I thought it was me, but um,” Rogers looks awkward. “I can hear your breathing,” he rushes out in a low tone, face flushing.

“I didn’t mean to,” he explains immediately. “I know it’s invasive, but the apartment is quiet, and the serum— Anyway. The point is, I can hear it when you start to panic. I thought maybe I could distract you, but that hasn’t really worked. So. Do you want to maybe…talk? Um. About it?”

The look of profound dread on Rogers’ face would be funny if Tony didn’t also feel like he’s about to vomit.

“I get claustrophobic, alright?” he finally manages to choke out.

“Claustrophobic,” Rogers repeats. “Tony, you fly around in a metal suit that fully encases your body.” He adds this hesitantly, like he genuinely thinks he might be breaking this news to Tony.

“Yeah but I’m not _trapped_ in it, am I.”

Tony is expecting Rogers to argue. Pepper had been equally skeptical when he’d tried to explain this to her (under serious duress, and then only because he’d had a panic attack in Pepper’s immediate presence. Even _Tony_ wasn’t skilled enough to get out of a conversation after that). But Rogers just gives the gauntlet a considering look.

“I guess you’re not,” he says slowly. “But your hand? That _is_ trapped.”

“Sorta,” Tony says, trying not to look as uncomfortable with the direction of this discussion as he feels.

“Okay,” Rogers says. “Well, can I help?”

“ _What_?”

“Can I help?” Rogers repeats. “The chair thing seemed to work pretty well…”

“Yeah, because I was the one pulling—you know what, it doesn’t matter. It’s fine.”

“Tony,” Rogers says, with that stubborn clench to his jaw that tells Tony he’s not going to back down on this one. And _ugh_ , Rogers _really_ needs to stop using Tony’s first name, because it is _far too effective_ , and soon, Rogers might even realize the full power of the weapon that’s just sitting in his arsenal.

“When you’re standing or sitting next to me—” Tony blurts out, and then has to close his eyes in mortification. But Steve just waits quietly, and after a few seconds, Tony manages to open them again and continue. “Like, when I can sense you’re there but I’m not looking directly at you? That tends to…freak me out. Especially when I—yeah.” He swings their joined hands. “Can’t actually get away.”

It occurs to Tony suddenly how this must sound: like Tony thinks Steve will _attack_ him or something, which is probably a really offensive insinuation to make about Captain America.

“It’s not personal,” he rushes to explain. “And I know it’s irrational. It’s just a stupid thing my brain does, ever since Af—” His words stutter to a halt. Which is _stupid_ , since he’s obviously said “Afghanistan” a million times since he got back, without any problem at all.

“Tony,” Steve repeats ( _and damn it, exposure is not lessening the effect of that)_. “You don’t have to explain, and it’s not stupid. If you don’t like it when I stand next to you, I won’t.”

“Just like that, huh?” Tony laughs, and Steve gives him a strange look.

“…Yes? If you still want to work on your gauntlet, we could pull my desk away from the wall. It’s a little narrower, so we can sit face-to-face and still be holding hands.”

Tony’s honestly skeptical, but Steve is giving him such a hopeful, earnest look, and he’s being so nice about Tony’s weird neuroses, that Tony finds himself sighing and saying “why not?”

They do indeed drag the desk away from the wall, but not before Steve repeats his careful, almost ritualistic transference of everything on the desk to other places around the room. Tony almost asks him about it this time, but he remembers the way Steve hadn’t pushed _him_ to talk about anything, and decides to keep quiet.

And to his vast surprise, he finds that Steve was right – it’s somehow _way_ easier to work on the gauntlet this way, even one-handed (one-and-a-half-handed? Three hands out of four? How are hands measured, anyway?). Just like with the rolling chair, which Tony had used to move both himself and Steve wherever he liked, something tension in his body eases at being able to see his hand resting in Steve’s on the desk between them. He can trace the path from Steve’s hand, to his arm, to his shoulder, to his face – a constant reminder that it’s _Steve_ who’s touching him and not some nebulous danger – which goes a long way toward quieting the mental alarms clamoring for his attention. It’s easier, now, to slide into an engineering rhythm, directing Steve the way he would JARVIS, or even DUM-E (although Tony will give Steve the credit of being a much more competent assistant than DUM-E).

And now that Tony’s not in a state of active psychological crisis, he finds himself at more leisure to admire what he’d only been able to notice before: Steve’s clever, capable hands, and his instinctive eye for detail work. Tony defies anyone to spend their formative teen years at MIT without developing a total kink for elegant soldering. Plus, now that Tony’s looking directly at him, he has the chance to witness the adorable little crinkle that Steve gets between his eyes when he’s concentrating on a project.

Tony wonders if this is the same face that Steve makes when he paints. He wonders if it’s the art training that makes Steve so good at this. He wonders if he’ll ever have a chance to figure it out, once they break the spell they’re under.

Steve glances up at him, eyes very blue in the light from the lamp Tony had positioned over the gauntlet, and Tony’s breath catches. Steve doesn’t look anything like Captain America now, despite the uniform he’s still wearing. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Steve no longer looks like an image from one of Tony’s dad’s posters brought to life, nor does he look like the man in the blue helmet whom Tony has gotten accustomed to bickering with over comms in the last few years.

Steve’s hair is sticking up where he’d run his hand through it absently as they were working, and the lamp’s shadows are working to soft the angles of his face. And since he hadn’t shaved this morning, there’s also a hint of stubble on his cheeks, a darker shade than the blond of his hair. Tony’s never seen Steve anything but clean-shaven before. He wonders how many other people have, and how many of those people are still alive in 2016.

“Tony?” Steve asks, and Tony realizes abruptly that his half-conscious verbal stream of instructions, explanations, and encouragement related to the gauntlet has slowed to a halt.

He coughs. “We’re, um – I think we’re actually done.”

He refuses to be disappointed that their short-lived collaboration is over.

“Really? That’s great, Tony!” Steve beams at him, and yeah, Tony is so, _so_ screwed.

***

“You know,” Tony realizes, hours later when they’re both getting ready for bed again. “Now that we have the nanoparticles up and running, it wouldn’t be that hard to program a few of them to stitch up the seam of your suit, if you wanted to rip the arm so that you could finally take it off.”

Steve gives him a rueful smile – the one that means Steve feels bad that he’s being forced to reject another one of someone’s terrible ideas – and shakes his head.

“I dunno …”

“You get that these little things are _way_ stronger than whatever stitching is on there now, right? And as you’re constantly reminding me, we don’t know how long we’ll be stuck together like this.”

“Well it _has_ been a hardship, Tony, but like I said last night, I’m pretty sure I’ve worn the suit through worse.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a delight, Rogers, and you know it. But seriously. They won’t damage the suit permanently, or get in your way in the field.”

Tony isn’t even really certain why he’s pushing this – whether it’s the vague hurt he feels that Steve won’t use the thing they just spent the whole day building together, or whether it’s frustration with the fact that Steve seems so resigned to being uncomfortable.

“I believe you. But it’s really fine,” Steve says flatly. His smile has gone a little forced. Apparently Tony has tripped over another one of Steve’s _things_ : something that, for some reason Tony doesn’t understand, is clearly _not_ fine, but which Steve will never admit to.

“If you’re fine, I’m fine.” Tony can’t help that his tone comes out vaguely sarcastic.

He then proceeds with the most passive-aggressive strip tease he can manage. It basically consists of a lot of pointed t-shirt seam ripping, and Tony’s utter refusal to be a coward about his arc reactor scars.

He can count on one hand the number of people who have seen these scars, even though they’re not – shouldn’t be – a big deal. But _yes_ , _fine_ , he might also have preferred to keep his shirt on. Whatever.

It’s not like he can do that _now_. Not after he’s made such a big deal about how _not_ a big deal it would be for Steve to change out of his own uniform. So Tony suppresses his instinct to flinch, or to angle his chest away from Steve, and instead acts like absolutely nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Which it isn’t.

“Oh. Um.” Steve says, totally undoing Tony’s masterful performance of chillness by angling himself away. A faint blush has risen to his cheeks, and his eyes dart to Tony’s chest and away again. The blush deepens.

“D’you want, uh, a blanket or something?” Steve asks. “Will you be cold?”

“Somehow I think I’ll manage,” Tony drawls, anxiety now transformed into amusement. He would’ve assumed Steve had been living in the 21st century for long enough (not to mention World War II) that he wouldn’t still get so flustered by a bit of skin, but Tony’s delighted to be wrong.

“Okay, well, then we should probably. Bed,” Steve announces, gesturing awkwardly toward it, as though to demonstrate that yes, there is indeed a bed in front of them.

They do the same shuffle-clambering move from last night, made easier by the fact that they’ve practiced it once before, and made much harder by the fact that Steve still refuses to look directly at Tony. But they figure it out eventually, and Tony isn’t even surprised this time to find himself falling asleep right away.

***

Just like the night before, Tony wakes up suddenly, with only a hazy sense of the noise or motion that had disturbed him. This time, when he glances over at the other side of the bed, it’s to find Steve still asleep. And yet, somehow, Tony is certain that it had been Steve who’d woken him. He watches quietly for a few more moments, and then –

“No.” The sound is stifled, more like a gasp than a word. Steve’s jaw clenches in his sleep, and his fingers twitch in Tony’s hand. His eyes are still closed, but his brow is furrowed like he’s in pain. “Please. Buck—“ The rest of the name is swallowed down as Steve’s eyes fly open.

Tony watches Steve take a few slow breaths, and feels the muscles in Steve’s hand relax deliberately. He’s still barely moving – has barely made a sound. If Tony wasn’t touching him, and wasn’t such a light sleeper himself, he may never have woken up at all. It would be impressive, that Steve’s tremendous self-control extends even into his nightmares, if it wasn’t so disturbing.

Steve stares at the ceiling in an echo of the position that Tony had woken up to find him in last night, and Tony wonders if Steve had been having a nightmare then as well.

“After Afghanistan,” Tony starts quietly, and finds that it’s somehow easier to say the word now, in the velvet hush of Steve’s bedroom. Steve doesn’t jump at the sound of his voice – he just turns his head slowly, pale eyes gleaming in the dark to let Tony know that he’s listening, even as the details of his expression are lost in shadow.

“I could barely sleep an hour at a time,” Tony continues. “Part of it was anxiety – and you’ve already seen that particular symptom in action – but when I first got back, I couldn’t sleep with a blanket, or even clothes sometimes, because in my dreams they’d turn into hands. Holding me down. But the worst nightmares were the ones that featured someone I cared about. Someone who died.”

Steve hadn’t asked Tony to explain himself earlier, and so Tony doesn’t ask him now. He just lies there and lets Steve watch him. After a few long minutes, Steve opens his mouth, and says three words that honestly were _not_ the ones that Tony was expecting to hear.

“The Winter Soldier.”

“The HYDRA assassin?”

Steve slants him a wry look, to which Tony replies: “I confess, I liberated some SHIELD files. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Well, you wouldn’t have found it in SHIELD’s files, because I never told them, but the Winter Solider, he…he was my best friend. From the war. Bucky Barnes.”

_Wow_. Okay. Tony is really tempted to interject at this point with about _five million questions_ , but he gets the sense that Steve, once interrupted, may not open up about this again.

“I didn’t know— Sam and I ran into him a few times as we were trying to figure out what had happened to Fury, but he always had a mask on. He, uh, blew up my old apartment, you know. In DC. Everything was gone. That’s actually how I ended up at Sam’s in the first place.”

Steve swallows and visibly steels himself for what he’s about to say next.

“But later, on the helicarrier, we were fighting, and…even then, I didn’t recognize him. He’s my _best friend_ , and I didn’t recognize him. Until. The helicarrier was coming apart around us, and we were right at the edge, and his mask slipped. I think…it must have surprised him, because he lost his balance, and. He fell.” Steve’s voice wavers on the word, and Tony suddenly wants more than _anything_ to reach out and touch him. Just a hand on his shoulder or, _God_ , a hug, but he’s still afraid of shattering whatever impulse is driving Steve to talk about this.

And then Tony remembers – stupid – that he’s _already_ touching Steve. So he squeezes the hand that he’s holding, and Steve squeezes his back. Just a light acknowledging pressure.

“It was like he was falling off that train, all over again. Except _this time_ , I did exactly what I’d wanted to do before. I dove into the Potomac after him, but I never found— He was just _gone_. Again. He could still be alive now, or he could have died in the water, and this time, I really would’ve been the one to kill him. So. Now you know what I dream about. Bucky falling.”

“ _Steve_ ,” Tony says quietly, helplessly, and squeezes his hand again. Steve chuckles wetly and scrubs his other hand over his eyes.

“Oh god, things must be really bad if you’re calling me that.”

“I call you ‘Steve’ sometimes.” Tony frowns. “I definitely have before.” He searches through his memory for an example, and realizes that maybe he actually _hasn’t_. In fact, he can’t even remember the moment he started calling him “Steve” in his head rather than “Rogers” or “Cap,” but it wasn’t actually that long ago.

The time they’ve spent stuck together has taken on a stretched, enduring quality in Tony’s mind. Maybe because they’ve been trapped in the same space, alone together, like Steve’s apartment is a little pocket universe away from their real lives, but it definitely feels like Doctor Strange’s appearance in Tony’s lab happened weeks ago, rather than only a handful of days. So much has changed since then.

“I don’t mind.” Steve’s eyes still look puffy and red, but the smile he directs at Tony is genuine.

“Do you want to try to sleep more?” Tony offers, and curses himself when Steve’s smile promptly disappears.

“Not tonight,” he says quietly. “But you should. You only slept a few hours. I’ve got a book here, and there’s enough light for me to read by.”

“Nah. Sleep or coffee, remember? I don’t remember ‘brooding silently in the dark’ being on that list, do you?”

“Good thing I’ve got an expert in 21st century nighttime customs here, to explain them to me,” Steve quips. He’s smiling again. And Tony resolutely tells himself that Steve didn’t mean for it to sound as innuendo-laden as it had. It’s _Steve._ Tony doesn’t think Steve would know an innuendo if it appeared in front of him festooned with eggplant emojis.

“Actually—“ Steve blurts out, before pressing his lips into a tense line. “Never mind. Coffee is a great idea.”

“Nuh uh. As the official arbiter of all things 21st century – your words, not mine – I’ve gotta tell you, it’s considered very bad form to lie to your midnight coffee buddy. Big 21st century party foul.”

“It’s really not a big deal. I just wondered if, um, if there’s any way I could take a shower? Hot water helps sometimes. I know it won’t be easy, with—“

Tony him off before he can walk back his own suggestion. “You got it. One hot shower, coming up. Let’s just go into the living room so I can grab something sharp enough to cut through your uniform. You OK with that?”

Steve nods with something like relief, and a few moments later, they’ve both crammed themselves into Steve’s small bathroom. The slightly tattered top of Steve’s uniform is hanging around his hips as he tests the water temperature. Tony, meanwhile, has found that if he perches on the toilet seat, he’ll be close enough to Steve in the shower that they won’t have to strain their arms, but Steve can still pull the shower curtain closed to maintain at least the illusion of privacy.

They stay like that for a few moments, with Tony leaning his head against the bathroom wall, mind drifting, trying not to fall asleep completely to the soothing white noise of the shower.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says suddenly, breaking their companionable quiet. He hadn’t even known it was something he’d been thinking about, until it’s already out of his mouth. No way to go but forward. “What happened to Bucky, I mean. I read the hospital records in your SHIELD file. He was trying to kill you. He almost did.”

There’s a palpable silence from the other side of the shower curtain, no longer quite as companionable as it had been.

“Earlier,” Steve finally says, slightly muffled through the curtain, “you asked me why I left SHIELD. And the truth is that it was never really about SHIELD. Before the ice, I didn’t have that many people in my life, but the people who were there…I knew them backwards and forwards. I trusted them. We were a team; together ‘til the end of the line – sometimes whether I liked it or not.” Steve chuckles, clearly remembering a specific memory.

Tony’s not sure why Steve seems so suddenly willing to confess all of this to him now. Tony thinks he’s heard Steve say more words tonight – let alone _meaningful_ words, about _feelings_ – than in the four-ish years they’ve known each other, put together. Tony wonders if, like the darkness of the bedroom, the fact that they can’t see each other through the shower curtain makes it easier to talk. Like Steve can pretend on some level that Tony isn’t really here.

“When I came out of the ice,” Steve continues. “I didn’t just lose those _people_. I think I…” his voice goes so low, almost a whisper, that Tony strains to hear it over the sound of the shower. “I think I lost my _capacity_ for it.”

And the pace of his words starts to speed up, as if, now that he’s said this much, he can’t stop until it’s all out:

“When we met in New York the first time, it was like I was watching you all from behind a screen, or like I was still on the other side of that sheet of ice, somehow. Still waiting for something to break through it. I felt like more of an alien than Thor was. I kept hoping to feel a connection, or a sense of teamwork, but we just…none of us clicked. You know what I mean; you were there. And at first, I thought it was just a problem with Fury’s scheme – with the Avengers – so I went to SHIELD, and it felt like more of the same.

Then, suddenly, I’m face-to-face with Bucky. And if anyone was gonna be able to break through that screen, it would’ve been him – the person I used to love most. But I didn’t even know him. And it made me realize that the problem was never the Avengers, or SHIELD. It was me. I lost whatever part of me used to be able to connect with other people. And I don’t think it’s coming back,” Steve finishes simply.

The bathroom falls silent, except for the hiss of the shower. Tony is reeling in the face of everything Steve’s just told him. He opens his mouth to say something – probably stupid and inadequate – to address at least _some piece_ of what Steve’s just confessed, but before he can, Steve says in a breezy, horrible tone: “But that’s fine—“

And honestly. There’s only so much Tony can be expected to bear.

“It’s _not_ ,” he says sharply, and he’s standing and ripping open the shower curtain before he remembers that Steve is _naked_ on the other side of it.

Steve blinks at him. There’s water running down his face, clinging spikily to the ends of his hair, to his eyelashes, dripping off his chin, and down his chest, and – and Tony is _absolutely_ not looking any further than that.

He wrenches his attention back to Steve’s face, and tries very hard to pretend he wasn’t ogling a man who’d just confessed his deepest traumas.

“It’s not fine, Steve! Jesus Christ,” Tony says firmly. “And it’s not true, either.”

Steve frowns and opens his mouth to argue the point. _Stubborn ass_ , Tony thinks fondly.

“Nope! My turn to talk now!” Tony makes a sharp gesture with his free hand, and Steve shuts his mouth, looking mutinous.

“Leaving aside the question of whether Barnes was actually himself, or whether his HYDRA conditioning turned him into another person entirely…which is definitely getting _way_ too existential for 3am when one of us is already naked…Steve. You _aren’t_ incapable of connecting with people. I mean, look at what we’re doing right now!”

Tony lifts their clasped hands meaningfully.

“Standing in my bathroom?” Steve asks wryly.

Tony rolls his eyes. “Yep, I was definitely highlighting the therapeutic benefits of your Lemon Verbena hand soap, and not, you know, _constructing a metaphor_.”

“Two days ago, you were calling the potential therapeutic benefits of this hand-holding spell “pseudoscience,” so how was I supposed to know what you meant?”

“Yeah, well, as an _actual_ scientist, and not a magician with delusions of grandeur, I am perfectly willing to revise my hypotheses in the face of new evidence. Not to mention, this totally feels like one of those climactic moments where the music swells, and we’ve all gained new self-knowledge, and a certain curse is lifted. So...”

Tony watches their hands expectantly for a beat, but when he tries to pull them apart, they remain resolutely clasped together.

“Oh come _on_ , this was the textbook definition of an epiphany! What more do you _want_ from us?” Tony groans at their hands. But Steve is openly laughing at him now, so Tony considers it worth it.

“If you’ve finished arguing with a magical phenomenon, can I maybe get out of the shower now?”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Tony sighs, and ignores the warm swoop in his stomach when Steve starts laughing again.

They end up in the kitchen, the coffee maker gurgling happily in the background. Steve has switched his uniform out for a pair of dark jeans that sit low on his hips and – in a turn of events specifically designed to drive Tony crazy – no shirt. And it’s not like Tony can exactly _blame_ Alternate Strange for casting a spell specifically designed to make Steve Rogers walk around shirtless, but did he really have to drag _Tony_ into his little sex fantasy?

Tony is gazing blearily at Steve’s chest – he’s gotten like three hours of sleep, okay? Give him a break – when Steve suddenly leans forward to study the coffee maker, eyes narrowing at an inscription on its side.

“Ebay my ass, Tony. I knew I recognized this. You really designed your _coffee maker_ to look like a futuristic airplane from the movie _Things To Come_?”

Tony, distracted by Steve mentioning his own ass for any reason, blurts out: “You’ve seen _Things To Come_?”

“You’re asking _me_ if I saw a sci-fi movie from 1936, which had some of its effects designed by Moholy-Nagy?”

“I have no idea what those sounds are that you just made, but I’m assuming they translate to: ‘yes, Tony, I have seen that film.’”

“Yes, Tony, I have seen that film,” Steve parrots. “And László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian artist. I was obsessed with him in art school – with the whole Bauhaus movement, actually.”

“Well, great. _That_ cleared everything right up.”

Steve just grins at him, like the utter monster he is, and then says: “I’m more surprised that _you_ saw it. A little old-fashioned for a futurist, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, well, the old-fashioned futurism was kind of its appeal, at the time. I was really into old sci-fi when I was younger,” Tony confesses. “I’m not sure exactly what I was looking for. Models for a better world, maybe? But they all felt so hopelessly _fictional_ to me, especially when my real life felt so clear. I always had a path forward, even when I didn’t like it. But after I built the Iron Man armor, I started thinking more and more about all the science fiction stuff I’d used to love as a kid.”

Steve is staring at his face steadily, listening to Tony ramble like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever heard, and Tony could so easily get lost in that bright, curious look in his eyes.

“I guess it does make sense,” Steve muses. “Like, _Things To Come_ was all about how engineers would save the world, wasn’t it? Scientists and pilots starting an organization called “Wings Over the World” that could put a peaceful end to an endless war. That’s part of what I liked about it, too. The news from Europe was already bad, even in ’36, and it’s not like the movie was sugar-coating any of that, but it still held out a certain kind of hope. And in the end, I guess the movie was right. We _do_ have wings over the world in the future: yours.”

“Designing my coffee-maker to look like the machines in the movie was a kind of joke with myself,” Tony admits. “Something like: coffee saves the engineer, so the engineer can save the world. What’s the quote from the movie? ‘Machines and marvels?’”

“That sounds about right.”

Steve gives Tony a soft smile.

They sit at the kitchen table for several more hours, drinking old-fashioned, futuristic coffee until the sun rises.

The rest of the day is spent equally quietly: tinkering with some more of Tony’s more urgent engineering projects, bickering over the best ways to fight off an assailant with their hands linked, and eating Chinese takeout on the sofa while Steve finishes his book. That evening, they fall asleep easily, and also manage to stay asleep through the whole night.

The next morning – the day of the Maria Stark Foundation charity gala – Tony wakes up to find sun streaming through Steve’s bedroom windows, his head pillowed against the soft warmth of someone else’s bare shoulder, and JARVIS’ very amused announcement that Ms. Potts is at the door.

Considering that each of these three things are surprising in and of themselves – the fact that they’d managed to sleep so late into the morning, the fact that in his sleep Tony had apparently initiated a _cuddle_ , and the fact that Pepper had just shown up without sending Tony multiple warning texts – Tony thinks he can be forgiven for needing a few seconds to process.

As he takes further stock of his body’s orientation in time and space, he realizes that not only is his face smushed against Steve’s shirtless chest, but that, in fact, his whole body is draped (quite artfully for an unconscious person) across Steve’s, while Steve’s free hand is tangled in the curls at the nape of Tony’s neck. Tony has no memory of how either of them got this way.

Although his own nightmares have subsided a lot in the years since Afghanistan, he still doesn’t love things or people touching him when he sleeps, as a rule. But instead of the panic he would expect to feel upon waking with his skull practically being _cradled_ by another person, all Tony feels now is…sleepy. It’s nice, actually, to feel the warm pressure of Steve’s hand there. Safe. It’s the kind of touch that feels like it could shield him from danger, rather than itself be a threat. And Tony has no illusions that his brain will react the same way next time (not that there’ll be a next time when it comes to cuddling with Steve! It’s a _hypothetical_ next time). But for now? For this one moment on this one particular morning? It’s nice.

“Sir, I’m afraid Ms. Potts is becoming quite insistent. She is also threatening to bring out her set of lock picks.”

“You teachin’ Pepper bad habits?” Steve’s voice drawls sleepily from somewhere above Tony’s head. Steve apparently becomes about 50% more “Brooklyn” in the mornings, which is a truly adorable detail that Tony will need to purge ruthlessly from his brain once this whole thing is over and they have to go back to their real, separate lives.

“She taught _me_ , actually. How do you think she got her job? Most fun interview by far.” Tony cranes his neck so that he can see Steve’s face as his eyes drift open. Steve notices him looking and gives him a lazy smile – the kind of smile that makes Tony realize he has no hope in hell of purging any of this from his brain, no matter how desperately he tries.

So it’s with a strange sinking feeling in the hollow of his stomach that Tony watches Steve wake up enough to come to the same realization that Tony’d had, about the cuddling.

“Uh. Sorry! I think we’re—” Steve stammers, and abruptly withdraws the hand in Tony’s hair, blushing furiously.

Once freed, Tony immediately rolls back over to his own side of the bed. “Yeah, sorry to use you as a pillow.”

“Just glad we both got some sleep,” Steve coughs, and then changes the subject. Masterfully. “Ah, should we find out what Ms. Potts wants? It probably wouldn’t be great for my reputation in the building if my neighbors caught her breaking into my apartment.”

“Yeah, your neighbors must hate you,” Tony says sarcastically, but lets himself be dragged out of bed and toward Steve’s front door.

It turns out that what Pepper wants is to give Tony a massive amount of shit for being asleep past 10am, “although I guess you’re still on your fake-honeymoon, no wonder you’re worn out,” which is just not a helpful comment to make to a person who, not fifteen minutes before, had been sleepily fantasizing about his reluctant-colleague-turned-reluctant-roommate and occasional insomnia buddy, who also, by the way, is _still not wearing a shirt_.

The second thing Pepper wants is coffee, which Tony busies himself with making, after he blurts out “shut up, we’re _dating_ not _married_ ,” and decides that smothering himself with coffee beans might be the better part of valor.

And lastly, Pepper wants to confirm that they haven’t successfully broken the hand-binding spell yet. Which Tony points out she could have easily determined with a simple phone call.

So it swiftly becomes clear that what Pepper _really_ wants is to hand them an entire color-coded binder that she’d put together to help them minimize hand-related weirdness at this gala, “as a Plan B, in case _your_ plan to just break the spell fell through.” To which Tony says: “wow, Pep, so much trust.” To which Pepper says: “Big words from a man who’s still holding Captain America’s hand.” To which Steve says: “So…does anyone want another cup of coffee?”

The upshot of Pepper’s visit, therefore, is that Tony and Steve have a binder’s worth of material to memorize, and that Steve can drink a ton of coffee when he’s stressed.

Pepper also sends Tony’s tailor over to Steve apartment to sew them both into their formalwear.

Tony has long suspected that his tailor is an ageless being who sustains his life purely on the energy unleashed by a well-folded pocket square. Also, Tony has never heard him speak more than a single word at a time, and therefore, he explains to Pepper, who would Massimiliano even _tell_ about the hand-holding spell?

Pepper makes Massimiliano sign the NDA anyway.

Massimiliano proceeds to give Steve a single assessing stare that sweeps from his head to his toe. Then he turns around and walks out of Steve’s apartment.

“Is he—?” Steve asks.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s all part of his process,” Tony replies.

And indeed, Massimiliano returns several hours later with a perfectly fitted black tux for Tony, the left sleeve of which he hand-stitches around Tony’s arm. Then he pulls out a _blue_ dinner jacket for Steve. Tony’s jaw drops.

This is just _so_ spectacularly unfair! Massimiliano has known Tony since he was six years old, and yet in all that time, Tony has _never_ managed to convince Massimiliano to let him wear a colorful jacket to a black tie event!

Massimiliano sews the blue jacket on to Steve’s right arm with another series of quick, perfect stitches. Then he steps back, tugs Steve’s shoulder seams straight, and _smiles_.

“Captain America,” he concludes with an approving little nod, before heading out of the apartment once more.

“Oh my God,” Tony breaths. “He _loves_ you. He wants to have your perfectly proportioned, well-dressed _babies_. I can’t believe it!”

“What are you talking about?” Steve asks distractedly. He twitches his shoulders and worries at the hem of his jacket. “Hey, are you sure this is okay? I mean—”

“Trust me,” Tony insists. “Nobody in the known universe is harder to impress than Massimiliano. You look amazing.”

“Oh.” Steve gives him a quick, darting glance as his cheeks flush. “Thanks. And, um. You too. Of course. You always do.”

“I mean it’s no _blue_ , but it’s fine.” Tony sighs dismally and starts to turn back toward the pile of flashcards that Pepper had included with the binder.

“Tony,” Steve insists, halting him with one hand on his shoulder and staring directly into his eyes. “I mean it. You look like…an old-fashioned future.”

“…Oh,” Tony breathes, and finds himself speechless for perhaps one of the only times in his life.

He’s desperately grateful that Pepper returns just then, lugging another color-coded binder that she’s titled _The Proposal Protocol_ , presumably after the 2009 fake relationship rom-com.

“Am I Sandra Bullock or Ryan Reynolds in this scenario?” Tony asks when he sees the name. “I mean, Pepper’s obviously Betty White. How about you, Steve? Sandra or Ryan? Thoughts?”

“I’m Sandra Bullock,” Steve insists.

“Well that was...not the answer I was expecting from you.”

“I had 70 years of pop culture to catch up on, I had no friends, and that movie is on cable a lot. So yes, Tony, I have seen _The Proposal_.”

“Honestly, my real issue is that I see you as more of the Ryan Reynolds of our relationship.”

“Nope,” Steve says firmly.

“If you’re quite finished fan-casting yourselves, can we please get back to how we’re going to manage the massive PR clusterfuck you handed over to me so that you could enjoy your fun little stay-cation here?” Pepper asks.

“Hey, _you’re_ the one who photoshopped our heads onto the movie poster and then made that the binder’s cover art.”

Which Tony is then informed in no uncertain terms is “irrelevant to the issue at hand” and also “unsupportive of his employees’ interests.”

In any event, in the time that Tony and Pepper spend shouting at each other about SI’s paid leave policies for some reason, Steve actually _does_ read through the Proposal Protocol binder.

Which means that now, as they ride their limo toward the gala, Steve is forced to catch Tony up on everything he’d missed (ignored) by not doing the homework.

“Pepper says the statement released by SI emphasized our desire for privacy, and so when we walk the red carpet into the event, we’re not supposed to stop to talk to the media. Oh, but we’re also not supposed to talk to anyone from the media who’s a guest at the gala. Actually, Pepper just put “IN GENERAL, TONY SHOULD SPEAK AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE” in all caps. It had its own subsection and everything.”

“It’s cute that she thinks the subsection is gonna make the difference there.”

“Does that mean we… _are_ going to talk to the media?”

“It means I’ve been lying to the media since I was a preteen. Just stick with me, kid, we’ll be fine.”

“Pepper’s binder said you’d say that,” Steve mumbles dismally.

Tony kind of assumes, based on his anxious binder-reading, the Steve is going to freeze up the moment they exit the limo into the noise of the crowd of journalists, paparazzi, and fans. Not to mention the flashing lights of the cameras. In the tiny part of his mind that Tony had assigned to care about this gala – leaving the majority of his brain to focus on more interesting things – he’d basically planned on having to shepherd Steve through it. Which is fine; Tony’s done it enough times himself that it’s pretty easy for him at this point.

But to his shock, Steve exits the limo gracefully, leading Tony out by the hand and managing to make it look chivalrous rather than magically-induced. He doesn’t squint or panic in the face of all the cameras pointed his way. Instead, he gives them a wide, Captain America smile before ducking his head toward Tony’s in a move designed to look intimate from a distance.

“I always forget you used to be an actor,” Tony says to him, leaning his own body into Steve, to complete the tableau.

“Stick with me, kid. You’ll be fine,” Steve murmurs into his ear, and Tony can’t help the bark of genuine laughter he lets out at that. Steve’s lips twitch and one of his eyebrows lifts minutely, an expression too small for anyone else to catch – a smile that’s only meant for Tony.

They run the gauntlet of reporters without any real mishap, but Tony knows that it’s actually in the gala itself that the real performance will begin. Unfortunately, it’s much harder to ignore an intrusive question from the CEO of Boeing who’s cornered you against a potted plant, than it is to ignore a Page Six reporter standing ten feet away.

Luckily, Pepper had pre-prepared answers for such questions as: “When did this happen?” And: “How did you finally get together?” And even: “What’s Captain America doing with _Tony Stark_?” Tony would have been offended by Pepper’s inclusion of this last one, if not for the fact that Steve is asked a version of that question three times before they even make it to the bar.

Of course, Steve ignores Pepper’s meticulously written, polite non-answer in favor of saying flatly: “Well, I asked him out, and I was lucky enough that he said yes. Why, how do _you_ get dates?” and staring at the questioner until they stammer out an excuse to leave the conversation.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be encouraging this behavior,” Tony points out as they’re (finally!) waiting for their drinks at the bar. “I think you’re becoming a bad influence on me.”

By the second hour of the same interminable conversation repeated _ad nauseam_ , Tony takes to inventing elaborate “so how did you two get together?” stories (“He rescued a kitten out of a burning building, and I was overcome by lust;” “we were trapped in a villain’s underground lair for _hours_ , sex was just a way to pass the time;” “two words: zombie fish”). He awards himself a point every time he gets Steve to crack in front of a New York socialite.

Tony has racked up a comfortable number of points by the time they hit their first true snag. Luckily, until Damian Grey corners them (the potted plants in this ballroom are a real hazard!), most people they encounter seem to believe that their continually clasped hands are cute. Damian Grey, unfortunately, has never seen a cute thing in his life that he didn’t want to immediately destroy and sell for parts.

Tony had made the mistake of sleeping with him once, years ago, and then had made the further mistake of not realizing that Damian expected Tony to pay him back for that blowjob with an investment in his new company.

They do not get along.

But confusingly, Damian also seems to believe that if he can just get Tony into bed again, the sex will be…mindblowing enough? Blackmail material? (The logic of the plan is _so_ questionable, no wonder Damian never had a company worth investing in), that somehow everything will get smoothed over between them. Tony has responded by turning “avoiding Damian Grey at social events” into an art form. It’s just his luck that tonight, he’s too distracted by making Steve laugh to notice Damian before his hand is clamping down too tight on Tony’s bicep, and Steve is stiffening like someone just insulted the Dodgers.

“Tony—” Damian says with a bad imitation at charm, and then does a theatrical double-take at Steve’s presence by his side. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize you were in the middle of a conversation. Hello. Damian Grey. I’m a business associate of Tony’s. And you are?”

It’s an absurd strategy, to pretend he doesn’t know who Steve is. The entire performance is absurd. It would almost be funny, except that Damian’s fingers are still digging into Tony’s arm. He takes a deep breath and tries to ignore them.

Damian sticks his other hand out for Steve to shake, which Steve of course cannot do, since his right hand is permanently attached to Tony’s. But Steve, who has been kindly and charmingly evading handshakes all night long, very pointedly ignores Damian’s outstretched hand, in favor of giving the one on Tony’s arm a look of pure murder.

“I’m Tony’s boyfriend. Hi,” Steve says flatly.

“Really?” Damian’s tone manages to convey his polite skepticism that Steve is any such thing. And _wow_ , Tony thinks hysterically. After all of Pepper’s meticulous preparation for every awkward eventuality they might encounter at this gala, perhaps the one scenario she _hadn’t_ planned on was someone implying that _Steve_ wasn’t good enough for _Tony_.

“Delighted to meet you,” Damian lies. Transparently. Tony is _so_ embarrassed for his former self, because this had actually _worked_ on him. “But if you’ll excuse us? Tony and I are old friends. I’m sure you’re used to running into those…” He smirks at Steve, and Steve’s hand spasms in Tony’s.

“Tony’s introduced me to a lot of wonderful people tonight,” Steve agrees placidly, somehow managing to convey with his tone that he highly doubts Damian is one of those people, and with his posture, that nothing short of a HYDRA attack on the ballroom will induce him to leave Tony’s side.

Damian visibly grits his teeth before changing tactics. “Tony, I actually wanted to follow up on the proposal I submitted to SI last month. It’s terribly technical; I wouldn’t want to bore your friend.”

He gives Steve an insincere smile and starts to tug on Tony’s arm. And Tony knows there’s an easy way to get himself out of this situation – has in fact gotten himself out of thousands of similar situations before – but when he searches his mind for the familiar script that will detach him from Damian, the words are all missing, replaced with a kind of buzzing static.

And Steve must see it on his face, because he steps in immediately.

“Actually, Tony promised me this next dance. You should probably let go of him now.”

Steve does the staring thing again – the one that always seems to make people do what he wants – until Damian does indeed let go. And then Steve marches Tony toward the dance floor without another word.

It’s not until they’re taking their place amidst the other couples gliding across the floor that Steve seems to fully realize what he’d committed them both to doing. He slides his hand up to Tony’s shoulder with a hesitance more appropriate to defusing a bomb, and his posture resembles nothing so much as a particularly terrified plank.

“So this seems like the appropriate moment to tell you that I don’t know how to dance,” Steve mutters into his ear. His mouth has gone pinched at the corners, and his blue eyes are searching Tony’s face almost anxiously, like he’s bracing for either teasing or disapproval.

“Yeah? Well, stick with me, kid,” Tony murmurs back. At that, Steve’s forehead smooths out and his eyes go soft. He gives Tony a heart-stopping smile.

“I think I can do that.”

Tony guides Steve through a few easy, swaying turns. Luckily, it’s Tony’s left hand that’s holding Steve’s right, which puts him in the correct position to lead a dance. Steve gets the hang of it as quickly as Tony knew he would, but he’s looking at Tony with such delight, like Tony’s managed some sort of miracle, rather than just reminded Steve that he already knows how to walk in time to music.

But even if it’s undeserved, Tony can’t look away from the affection he imagines he can see in Steve’s expression.

The rest of the gala attendees fall away, until it’s just the two of them in their pocket universe once again, moving in elegant arcs around the floor until Tony is dizzy with it. He feels consumed by the light touch of Steve’s hands, by how effortlessly Steve follows Tony’s guidance with just a hint of pressure against his back, and by how easily Tony can predict Steve’s movements, just from feeling the muscles of his back shift under Tony’s hand.

Steve is staring into his eyes like he’s longing to move closer, and Tony can barely stop himself from bridging that tiny space that separates them, in order to learn Steve’s body so much more thoroughly than he can from a dance.

Steve brushes his lips right up against Tony’s ear, and Tony’s breath catches.

“Grey is still watching you,” Steve murmurs. It takes Tony several dazed moments to process the words, let alone remember that other people exist in the world besides them, let alone find the wherewithal to care about _Damian Grey_ of all people.

But once he does, it’s as good as being doused in cold water.

Of course. They’re only dancing in the first place to avoid Grey’s intrusive questions, and to preserve their cover as a couple. And Steve is a great actor. He’d proven that earlier in front of the paparazzi.

“Right,” Tony says, and hopes the bitterness he’s feeling doesn’t come through in his tone, or that if it does, Steve attributes it to annoyance about Grey. “Well, we’re right on schedule for our daring escape.”

He gives Steve a slow, filthy (utterly false) grin, before towing him off the dance floor and then out of the ballroom entirely.

“Is this part of the plan?” Steve asks, even as he lets himself be towed.

“It’s part of _my_ plan,” Tony retorts grimly. “And everyone in there’d probably be _more_ suspicious if I didn’t drag you away at some point tonight for sex.”

Steve stumbles over his own feet.

Tony, meanwhile, has found the door he’s looking for, partially concealed in a hallway off the main ballroom. He pulls Steve into the small supply closet before flipping on an overhead light. They just barely fit pressed up against each other in the tight space.

For a genius, Tony realizes, he can sometimes make _truly stupid_ decisions. Like, for example, shutting himself into a tiny closet with the man he’s half in love with.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in here during these kinds of events,” Tony explains to distract himself from the feeling of Steve’s chest radiating heat against his own.

“Have you?” Steve asks stiffly, fixing his gaze on the closet door behind Tony’s shoulder. It takes Tony a few seconds to figure out why Steve sounds so judgmental all of a sudden.

“Not usually…um… _with_ someone,” Tony clarifies hastily. “It’s a good place for a quick break. But it’s definitely a lot smaller than I remember it being. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was a good idea.” Steve gives him a warm smile.

“Hiding out from assholes, just another perk of fake-dating Tony Stark,” Tony says flippantly.

“One of the many,” Steve agrees, his words teasing but his expression oddly intent. “Hey, Tony…”

“Hm?” Tony asks, distracted by trying to put some distance between his and Steve’s bodies without making it _look_ like that’s what he’s doing. He cracks his elbow against a shelf of towels, and is forced to give up.

“Tony.”

“What?” Tony glances up to find Steve’s face suddenly much closer than it had been an instant before, something like recklessness brightening his eyes and making his lips tilt up at the corners.

“Fair warning? I’m about to change the plan.”

And with that, Steve kisses him.

It’s to Tony’s credit that he only freezes for an instant, shocked by Steve’s lips pressing lightly and undemanding against his, before he manages to catch up to what’s happening and kiss Steve back. Steve’s breath catches when he feels Tony kiss him back – like maybe he hadn’t _really_ believed Tony would – and his free hand slides up to cup the base of Tony’s skull in an echo of the way he’d been touching Tony this morning.

The gesture, intimate and already familiar, nearly _destroys_ Tony right there, and he’s not proud of the little moan he makes as he deepens the kiss. And now that he’s started it, Steve seems more than happy to let Tony take control of the rest, letting Tony press him into the set of shelves at his back (sending a stack of bar soap clattering across the floor), their bodies fitting together exactly the way Tony had been craving earlier during their dance. And it’s all so utterly addicting that Tony has to pull away and take a breath before he literally dies from it.

“’Change the plan.’ Oh my God. Pepper’s gonna kill us,” Tony laughs breathlessly. “She had the whole break-up binder already prepared.”

“I wonder if that one has us photoshopped as Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn?”

“Your encyclopedic knowledge of rom-coms from the mid-aughts is starting to concern me.”

Steve laughs and moves to kiss him again, cradling Tony’s face in both his hands.

… _In both hands_.

Tony pulls away from the kiss with a gasp. Steve makes a small, discontented noise and goes to chase him, and while Tony would like nothing better than to be caught again, he pushes gently against Steve’s chest with his (left!) hand.

“Steve,” Tony mumbles dizzily. “I think we just had our epiphany.”

“What?” Steve slurs. Then he blinks, and his blue eyes regain some of their usual sharpness. “Oh!”

“Stephen Strange, you dirty man.” Tony shakes his head in delight.

And suddenly, the invocation of his name summoning him like Voldemort or something, the closet door is flung open to reveal Stephen Strange himself, standing in the hallway of this Manhattan hotel.

“ _Why_ ,” Tony whines. He’d _really_ been looking forward to putting his newly freed hand to good use.

“I’ve been monitoring your spell from afar. I could sense that it had lifted,” Strange says briskly.

“Yeah, about that,” Tony interjects, still annoyed at the interruption. “Care to explain why you put us under a fuck-or-die spell?”

“A what?” Steve asks, wide-eyed.

“Uh, incidentally, in addition to sci-fi movies from the ‘30s, I also may’ve gone through a _Star Trek_ fanfiction phase as a teenager. Don’t worry about it.”

“First of all, it was my alternate universe _counterpart,_ not me,” Strange insists. “And second of all, you’re completely mischaracterizing the—"

“Did we, or did we not, have to make out to break the spell?” Tony asks.

"I am _not_ responsible for the way you chose to fulfill the parameters of the—and for the record? It’s an extremely complex negotiation of magical _energies_ , and—"

“Tony. Don’t be crass,” Steve cuts in. Doctor Strange looks deeply thankful for his intervention, but Steve’s eyes are sliding to the side in a way that Tony is coming to recognize means trouble. “You said it yourself. The spell lifted when we kissed. So it was really just a Sleeping Beauty spell all along.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Strange groans.

“Aww, does that mean we shared True Love’s Kiss?”

“That’s it, I’m leaving.” Strange only makes it a few steps before he’s whirling back around. “And for the record, assholes? I can sense the full parameters of the spell now that its been fulfilled, and it was only ever set to release after a certain time. No other conditions. It seems like the only thing my alternate universe counterpart wanted was to force you both to spend time with one another. I take no responsibility for _how_ you spent it. Come find me when you’re ready to talk about Thanos. You know, the universe-ending threat that my other self risked his life to warn you about?”

And with another judgmental sniff, Strange disappears in the blink of a portal.

“Yeah, that seems like tomorrow’s problem,” Tony decides.

“Well, first thing, we should probably contact everyone on Fury’s old list of potential Avengers,” Steve muses. “Strange seemed pretty convinced that the Avengers would be the key to beating Thanos. I think Romanoff and Barton are still working for SHIELD. Sam’ll definitely know—”

“Hey.” Tony presses his finger against Steve’s bottom lip, and Steve’s eyes cross adorably as he tries to look down at it. “We can save the world later. Tonight, I think we should savor our epiphany.”

“Oh, you mean that climactic moment where the music swells, and we’ve all gained some self-knowledge, and the curse is lifted?” Steve teases.

“Mm,” Tony agrees, leaning in to kiss Steve once more. “Close enough.”


End file.
